Frye Festival

Spotlight on the 27th Edition

Jon Claytor is a graphic novelist, painter, and writer based in Sackville, New Brunswick.

After having established himself as an oil painter, Jon has recently found his passion and true calling in graphic storytelling. He has written many illustrated interviews for the CBC since 2021 and his memoir, Take The Long Way Home was published by Conundrum Press in 2022. His latest graphic novel, Nowhere, about growing up among monsters in a small maritime town, will be published by Goose Lane Editions in 2026. He is currently working on a book about the toxic drug supply affecting rural New Brunswick with harm reduction advocate, Ashley Legere. Jon has also run a number of creative workshops for a variety of audiences focusing on storytelling and comic memoirs.

Jon was born in San Francisco and has lived and worked in Moncton, Sackville, Halifax, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. He co-founded SappyFest independent music and arts festival in 2006 and opened Thunder & Lightning Ideas Ltd. in 2013. Jon holds an MFA from York University (2012), attended Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (1991), and holds a BFA Mount Allison University (1998). He was nominated for a Juno Award for the cover of Gord Downie’s “Battle Of The Nudes” in 2004. His memoir, Take the Long Way Home, was shortlisted for the New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2022. His new graphic novel Nowhere will be published by Goose Lane in March 2026.

Christophe Collard holds a doctorate in language and literature (Brussels, 2009) and has taught at universities and colleges in Belgium, Spain, China and the Philippines, as well as holding research fellowships in the USA and his second home, Canada.

Author of numerous journal articles, he has also written a monograph entitled Artist on the Make: David Mamet’s Work Across Media and Genres (2012), which was shortlisted for the 2014 biannual prize of the European Society for the Study of English.

Currently a professor at the Université de Moncton, he combines his academic activities with writing and translation work for the agance Prokopê, which he founded in 2019.

Stephanie Domet is the author of two novels, Homing and Fallsy Downsies, both published by Invisible. She also co-wrote a non-fiction book for middle grade readers called Amazing Atlantic Canadian Women, published by Nimbus. She is the co-founder and co-executive director of the AfterWords Literary Festival, and the managing editor of The Dalhousie Review. She teaches creative writing to adults and kids at her home in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She is no doubt wearing something she sewed herself.

Digital Programming Manager

Drew Lavigne is the anglophone Poet Laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick. A member of the editorial board at The Fiddlehead and host of the Attic Owl reading series. Recent work has appeared in Valium, Visual Arts News, Tourniquet Magazine, and with Éditions Rhizome. He translated the collection Poems Twofold with Georgette LeBlanc and is the author of Evening Dress with Anstruther Press.

Éloïse LeBlanc (she/her) is an author, artist, and cultural worker who cultivates hypersensitivity, shares her writing in a soft voice, and lingers over maritime coastal textures; she is interested in tiny worlds and ways of magnifying them. In 2022, she published Le hoquet en pulpes with La maison en feu. Several of her texts have found refuge in magazines (Estuaire, Nyx, Saturne, Les Éphélides). She is the founder and executive director of the Projet Borgitte in Cap-Pelé, New Brunswick.

Sébastien Lord-Émard is an Acadian queer activist and writer. He/she resides in the unceded territory of Mi’kma’ki, where the Epetkutogoyek (Petitcodiac) River forms a bend at Panacadie Brook. Sébastien Lord-Émard has published poetry, essays on Acadian visual arts and an “Égoportrait du poète en burnout” in the collective En cas d’incendie, prière de ne pas sauver ce livre (Éditions Prise de parole, Sudbury, 2021). After seven years as project manager at Éditions Bouton d’or Acadie and three years as director of development at the Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick, Sébastien Lord-Émard becomes coordinator of the Revue acadienne de création littéraire Ancrages in the summer of 2024.

Thandiwe McCarthy is a 7th generation African Canadian spoken word poet, writer, public speaker, and the culture correspondent for Maritime EDIT magazine, where he highlights Black community leaders and artists. Known for his unique “Vibe Harvesting” performances, he creates poetry spontaneously at events across the Maritimes.

Thandiwe has co-founded the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance and organized the provincial event Emancipation Celebration. He played a key role in having August 1st recognized as Emancipation Day in New Brunswick. Though he has stepped back from volunteer work, his contributions have left a lasting impact on the community.

The “Still Here Initiative,” celebrating fifteen generational Black New Brunswick families, is gearing up for a national art exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and a globally distributed book published by Goose Lane Editions, both launching in July 2025.

Thandiwe’s memoir, “Social Oblivion: Raised Black in New Brunswick,” is available now.

Gabriel Robichaud is a multidisciplinary artist from Moncton who began his artistic career in 2007. With an academic background in drama at the Université de Moncton, his multidisciplinary practice has led him to work on stage, writing and directing. His choice to add a political dimension to his practice, coupled with the positions he takes in the public arena, also leads him to deal with various subjects concerning the arts, culture and language, particularly in the media.