Berni Stapleton is a playwright, author, and actor. She is the Artistic Director of Girl Power Inc. She is co-artistic director of the Grand Falls-Windsor Theatre Project. She has spent her career making beautiful theatre in unexpected places. She has had almost forty plays professionally produced in Canada and beyond, including Ireland, the U.K. and New York. Her plays include the iconic Offensive to Some, Woman in a Monkey Cage, Brazil Square, and The Pope and Princess Di. Bernardine was writer-in-residence at Memorial University in 2019 and developed and taught their first introductory course in playwrighting. She has a new one person show in development called Antidote for Life: Memory, Madness, and the Performing Artist. She lives in St. John’s with rescue beagles Georgie Girl and Tiggy Duff.

“I write about ordinary people of Newfoundland-Labrador who harbour extraordinary stories. I write down their names. I gravitate toward one-woman/person plays that carry intimate revelations. I am fascinated by stories that have been forgotten, especially women’s stories. Playwriting is about lifting other voices.” – Berni Stapleton

Sonya Malaborza wears many hats in the literary scene of Atlantic Canada, but she is perhaps best known for her work as a literary translator. For the past twenty years, she has been translating novels, poems, and plays from English, and occasionally from Spanish. L’accoucheuse de Scots Bay, her translation of Ami McKay’s novel The Birth House, earned her a nomination for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in 2021. Sonya is also an author: her first collection, Prendre racine, was the recipient of the 2024 Antonine-Maillet Award. In her role as an editor, Sonya supports authors and translators at Éditions Prise de parole, where she serves as co-executive director and editorial director. Malaisant (Offensive to Some) marks a return to theatrical translation, a form she is particularly fond of.

www.sonyamalaborza.com