Wild West WordFest Artists
Anita Crowshoe is a cultural interpreter and storyteller from the Piikani Nation of the Blackfoot Confederation in Southern Alberta. Her family has been a part of the Calgary Stampede’s Indian Village for four generations. Crowshoe achieved her dream of working for The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth when she became Site Coordinator for the Stampede School. Her storytelling pulls from two worlds; traditional Piikani life and western heritage.
Doris Daley is an award-winning poet and regular headliner at cowboy festivals throughout the west. Twice voted top female cowboy poet in North America, this Alberta writer comes from a gene pool that includes Mounties, desperados, hardy Saskatchewan homesteaders, Alberta ranchers, petticoated-bushwackers and fancy two-steppers: the perfect pedigree for a cowboy poet!
Bob Dyck is a widely respected auctioneer with 40 years of experience. He has served as a volunteer for the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, and was elected to the Board of Directors from 1994 to 2005. He is an owner of The Auction Company, Ltd. where he specializes in rural equipment and land sales. Most recently, Dyck’s fast-talking talent was seen on the hit TV show Heartland.
Sandra Shields is a fifth-generation Albertan who grew up on stories of covered wagons and prairie homesteads. Photographer David Campion came of age in apartheid South Africa, an experience that left him with a distrust of dominant social mythologies. The couple has collaborated on many projects that have appeared in galleries, magazines and books including The Company of Others and Where Fire Speaks: A Visit with the Himba, which won the BC Book Prize for Nonfiction. Together they present their latest photography book, Cowboy Wild.
Hannah Stilwell is the co-founder of Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD), one of the few professional jazz companies in the world. She is a dancer, teacher and choreographer. Stilwell has traveled the world collecting musical and movement forms that have fused to become jazz dance. Currently she works as a teacher and dancer with groups in Canada, the United States and Cuba. Stilwell looks forward to performing in I Just Wanna Be a Stampede Queen, a Sheri-D Wilson original piece they first performed together over 15 years ago.
Sheri-D Wilson is a world-class spoken word performer and daughter to a Hall of Fame cutting horse cowboy. She also has eight collections of poetry; her most recent is Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe. In 2011 she edited, The Spoken Word Workbook: inspiration from poets who teach. An international ambassador of Canada’s spoken word community; Wilson is the Artistic Director of the Calgary Spoken Word Poetry Festival and Program Director of the Spoken Word Program at The Banff Centre.
Dr. Yvonne Trainer has published a chapbook and four books of poems plus over 400 poems and poetic prose pieces in literary journals and magazines. She has served as an editor for six national and international journals and presented over 500 talks and poetry readings throughout Canada and in the USA. She will be reading from a biography in verse titled Tom Three Persons about the fabled First Nations rodeo star, along with several new poems.
Bruce Innes began performing professionally at age 11. He has performed alongside some of the most respected singer-songwriters of his generation, including John Denver, Joni Mitchell and blues legend John White. In addition to writing songs for performers around the world, he also tours with his band, The Original Caste. Innes will be debuting a new collaboration with poet Doris Daley at Wild West WordFest.
This project is sponsored by the Calgary Stampede.
