Meet the fine folks who have published with Pete’s Press!
K.D. Kulpa
K.D. Kulpa is a horror author living in Saskatchewan, Canada, with her husband, three boys, and beagle. She grew up in a haunted house in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, which sparked her interest in the horror genre and all things eerie and mysterious. When not writing, she loves reading, painting, travelling, and touring haunted buildings.
Her fascination with horror, mysteries, and the unknown has led her to also host ParaGhoul Paranormal, a Canadian paranormal radio show and podcast. Coma is her debut novel, although she also regularly releases short stories to her readers via her monthly newsletter.
Connect with K.D. Kulpa online:
@kdkulpa on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Tiktok
K.D. Kulpa’s debut novel, ‘Coma’ is available for now!
Andy Whitman
Andy Whitman is originally from Mississauga, Ontario, and moved west to work and study. He works as an environmental scientist, currently living on Treaty 4 Territory in Regina, Saskatchewan. He has published creative writing since 2011 under the pseudonym Jack Caseros, in honour of the Argentine city where his mother grew up, and he completed Stanford University’s Online Writing Course for Novel Writing in 2019. His short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Syntax & Salt Magazine, and Acentos Review, among other great venues. He has served as an Associate Fiction Editor for the literary magazine, Pithead Chapel, and his flash fiction was awarded as a runner-up in the 2018 True North Writing Contest. When Andy is not writing or dealing with environmental messes, he is usually a very tired horsey for his three children.
Andy blogs at andywhitman.wordpress.com
The Sun Makes a Sound is his debut novel, out now!
Chelsea Manz
Chelsea Manz is a Saskatchewan girl, born and raised, Chelsea is from the Earl Grey/Southey area and continues to reside there with her husband, two children and two dogs. Although spending her work history in the marketing and communications industry, from a young age, Chelsea has dreamed of being an author.
Her first published work, which she authored and illustrated, is a children’s book titled “Discovering Dana”. It is available now.
Chelsea has plans to continue to publish children’s books and has a plan for an adult fiction novel to be published in 2025/early 2026.
When not working in the advertising, communications and marketing industry, Chelsea can be found surrounding herself with loved ones either on her front porch or at her cabin.
Tricia Saxby
Tricia Saxby is from Regina, born and raised. Having spent the last 16 years raising their two boys in Kamloops, BC, she and her husband moved home, new empty-nesters and fuzzy kid parents to a sassy cat and a high-energy puppy.
Working in the medical field as a transcriptionist for her whole working
career, Tricia spent her free time reading and writing romance stories. Since then, she’s written and published short stories in five anthologies and a six-sentence blogspot, and has professional certifications in line-editing and proofreading.
Tricia’s upcoming novel, Her Ex’s Secret is part of in her duet series, and will be released November 20th.
When not working or writing/editing, Tricia enjoys taking her puppy for walks, crocheting purses, or sitting on her deck enjoying a glass of wine
and a good book.
Joe Ralko
Joe Ralko has written more than 200 columns exclusively for The Senior Paper since 2005.
He has earned his living as a writer for more than four decades, first as the sports editor of the daily newspaper in his hometown of Kenora, Ontario and then as an editor, reporter and photographer for a variety of media outlets in three provinces before joining The Canadian
Press news agency where he earned a pair of nominations for National Newspaper Awards
(NNAs) as a correspondent. The NNAs are to Canadian print journalism as the Pulitzer Prize is in the United States.
Remember When? Is his fifth nonfiction book.
He welcomes your thoughts by email jralko@myaccess.ca
Robyn Tocker
Robyn Dansereau, who publishes her novels under her maiden name Robyn Tocker, has been publishing novels in her Ever After Tales collection for over fifteen years. Inspired to write the real story behind happily ever afters, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and works as a freelance editor and personal training specialist. In her free time, she reads copious amounts of books at her acreage near McLean, Saskatchewan, where she lives with her husband and two dogs.
Robyn Tocker is the author of the Ever After Tales Collection. The fourth book in the series, Into The Forest Deep was published by Pete’s Press in 2024, and the first book, In A Cottage We Once Knew, was reissued with us in 2025.
https://robyntocker.weebly.com/
Instagram: @robyndansereau
Megan Ryan
Megan Ryan is the youngest of three kids. Her dad was a farmer and her mother was a janitor. Her sister is a substitute teacher and Zumba instructor and her brother is in the Canadian Air force. Growing up her family moved around a lot but mainly lived in Macklin, Saskatchewan or Shellbrook. Megan has been a Care Aid in Saskatoon for twelve years and has been married to her very supportive and loving husband, Mike, for nine. They have a three-year-old named Elias who they absolutely adore. Megan gives him credit for branching out into writing. He is such a hilarious little ball of inspiration.
Megan’s debut title, a children’s book called My Monster Mommy is coming our in the Spring of 2025.
Jerry Vanschaik
Jerry Vanschaik is America’s premier coffee novelist, perhaps because he is the only one. He has written two full length novels with titles too coffee-centric for most, Tripio and The Trier. Jerry began his career in coffee during the late 1980s. He has done everything in the coffee business from throwing 132 pound bags of green coffee off the back of a semi to throwing drunken customers out of his pioneering Starbucks store in Chicago. As a result he is able to create worlds where coffee is nearly a living character and not a trendy plot affectation.
Jerry began journaling after leaving college and keeps a journal to this day. Writing has always been a type of meditative practice for him. In order to keep his mind in a place of energized calm so that he can sit down to write, he does yoga, meditates, the aforementioned journaling, reads and tries not to take it all too seriously. His four young adult children make sure of that.
Debbie Pitzel
Curiosity, a vivid imagination and an enchantment with the written word made Debbie Pitzel a reading fanatic at an early age.
Sharing this love of reading with her children only deepened her appreciation and inspired Debbie to dream about writing a book some day.
Now a grandmother, Debbie is even more passionate about sharing stories that spark fun and imagination while offering valuable life lessons. Debbie lives with her husband in Regina, SK. She is the proud mom of a grown son and daughter, and a doting and smitten Amma to her grandson.
Debbie’s first children’s book, When I Go To Sleep, is releasing in May 2025.
Annabel Townsend
Annabel Townsend is a life-long book lover, coffee aficionado and stubborn cyclist. She has a PhD in geography and wrote her thesis about the coffee industry before opening her own coffee shop in the UK. She has now run small businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, most recently, The Penny University Bookstore in Regina, SK. A lot of these entrepreneurial adventures end up in her writing. She writes mainly nonfiction but occasionally dabbles with spoken word and sci-fi. She lives in Regina with her husband, kids and a great many small animals.
Annabel’s previous work includes ‘Spilling the Beans: ideas of quality in the speciality coffee industry‘ (Lambert Academic Press: 2012), ‘It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time’ (Pottersfield Press, 2018, reissued as ‘Trouble Brewing’ by Pete’s Press in 2025), and ‘A Thousand Lives’ (Wood Dragon Books, 2023) which won a Prairie Dog award for Best Local Book in 2023.
Her Pete’s Press debut is ‘Books and the City‘ was published in Feb 2025.
Glen Harper
Glen Harper has attended university, as well as worked in a variety of vocations, including manufacturing, construction, housekeeping/custodial supervisor, and warehousing, among others. From this experience, extending for thirty years, Glen writes on such themes as the skills of the job, the contribution of workers to the company, the poor pay of workers in relation to their skills and contribution, the misplaced power of the managers, and the exclusion of workers from governance in the company.
His articles and book reviews have appeared on the website of Canadian Dimension, in Our Times: Canada’s Independent Labour Magazine, and Humanist Perspectives magazine.
More of his articles and book reviews can be found on his personal website:
Aquila
Aquila is a lover of the fantastic and of people. She’s a writer from Saskatchewan and a passionate cat person.
For her, the writing of the Grimm Chronicles began as a way to cope with her struggles with the world around her and her personal demons. She hopes that in sharing her work she can reach others who are struggling with similar issues and offer them the same hope her writing offered her.
Aquila’s latest YA novel, The Sorcerer’s Gold will be published in the summer of 2025.
Find out more at https://aquilawrites.com/
Kay Parley
Author Kay Parley sadly passed away in 2025, at the age of 102. Kay kept up a regular column in Folklore Magazine and the Wolseley Bulletin until well past her hundredth birthday. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Inside the Mental: Silence, Stigma, Psychiatry, and LSD about her time at the Weyburn Mental Institute in the 1950s, first as a patient, and then as a psychiatric nurse. At age 95, she published the magical novel The Grass People, as well as the dark mystery The Monkey Vault.
In 2019, Kay Parley was the subject of an award winning documentary, A Mind of Her Own, by filmmaker Judith Silverthorne. A talented painter, educator, and author, Kay worked with Lorne Greene at CBC Radio and taught sociology for many years at the Kelsey Institute in Saskatoon.
One Woman’s Century, a collection of Kay’s writing that spans 86 years is coming out with Pete’s Press in 2025.
Leighton Peart
Leighton Peart is an author and copywriter from Toronto and one of our editors at Pete’s Press. He is a philosopher and holds a double degree in Philosophy and Sociology from Toronto Metropolitan University. He enjoys writing, fixed gear bicycles, and playing volleyball. His favourite author is Albert Camus.
This year, Leighton decided to publish his Selected Writings, a collection of philosophical essays that was released by Pete’s Press in June 2025.
Leighton blogs on Medium, at medium.com/@leightonpeart
Cheryl Wilson
(Bio coming soon! We promise!)
Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson
Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is a psychologist in private practice and an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Regina. His main professional interest has been on the evolution and structure of the self.
He has also published on the psychological impacts of Indian residential schools, the use of a community development process to combat youth suicide, the construction of the (North American) aboriginal self, the concept of free will in psychotherapy, and male stigma as it affects men’s identity.
He is currently President of the New Enlightenment Project: A Canadian Humanist Initiative.
Check out robertsonpsych.com for more details.
Teela Robertson
Teela Robertson, MC. is a psychologist in Alberta who started in a not-for-profit as a community clinical counsellor. She moved into private practice in 2020 with a focus on treating individual adults and couples with relationship struggles, depression, anxiety, trauma, and specializes in working with Indigenous peoples. Teela has applied Dr. Robertson’s mapping to adults experiencing mood disruptions and those experiencing uncertainty of self. She approaches therapy through a cross-cultural lense with a focus on fostering empowerment and self-guided changes.
Lili Zwart
An import from the Netherlands, Lili Zwart moved to Canada at age four and grew up across the country in Halifax, Toronto, and Vancouver before making Regina her home. There, she earned a Bachelor of Social Work degree and dedicated twenty-five years to public service, first with World War II veterans and later with First Nations communities.
She honed her craft writing short stories and taking writing courses, including Michael Hague’s Six-Stage Plot Structure and Novel Revision at University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.
Lili co-wrote a screenplay for which she had representation, and she is currently writing a sequel to her soon-to-be-published debut novel, Miracles on Bella Camila, a coming of age story that explores themes of healing masculine wounds, seeing our neighbours with new eyes, and the restoration of land and man.
Now retired, Lili enjoys life with her grown twin sons, their wives, and three grandchildren.
Rhett Stevenson
Born and raised in Carrot River, Saskatchewan. Rhett Stevenson grew up with an appreciation for the outdoors and nature, which led to his affection for the night skies. He often found inspiration from the stars for his love of science fiction. His favourite science fiction series include Firefly and Legends of the Galactic Heroes. His enjoyment of writing stories came from his fond memories of playing with his brothers when they were children. They often gave each other bruises from fighting with sticks when they pretended to be pirates, knights, or characters from Bleach.
He is of English, Scottish, German, and Plains Cree descent. He has also taught in Japan and Uzbekistan. His admiration for the rich history of different cultures is evident in his works. He is currently working on a one-shot comic story called Parendroid. Through collaboration with Pete’s Press, he is releasing the first volume of SOKOS.
Kat Gilks
Kat Gilks grew up in Regina and has been writing since elementary school. Over the course of nearly four decades, she has written many types of stories in a variety of genres, but has always had a particular interest in speculative fiction.
Having studied history and information science, Kat works in nonprofit and, when not writing in her spare time, enjoys volunteering, exploring, and spending time with her
family and cats.
Rob White
Rob White is a writer based in Regina whose work blends humour, melancholy, and the surreal. He has written essays and short comedic pieces for outlets such as Points in Case, Slackjaw, The Bear Creek Gazette and Little Old Lady Comedy. In 2025, Rob had the unlikely pleasure of opening for David Sedaris on his Canadian tour.
Rob is also a filmmaker who’s award winning films have been screened internationally and his work has been featured on Vice, Noisey, Business Insider, and The Hard Times.
His first collection of short fiction is called “I Have Dreams Where I am Drowning” and is due out soon.
Want to become an author too?
Our Illustrators
Alora Biram
Alora Biram is an artist born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan. She showed a passion for creating as a young girl with many fond memories of drawing and painting. That passion led to a career in early childhood education. As both an educator and artist, she encourages others to see their worth, celebrate differences and connect with the world around them.
Alora is a new, proud mother to her daughter, who is inspiring her to pursue her dream of illustrating children’s books.
She can be found at: Artbyalorabiram.ca
Brenna Senger
Brenna Senger began creating art from a very young age. She would draw and create as much as she could, and on anything she could. Brenna loves all mediums but began in pencil, advancing to ink, pastels, different forms of paint and now to digital art. Today she is following her dream of being able to draw all the time, no matter the canvas.
My Monster Mommy, with Megan Ryan, is her first venture as an illustrator but she hopes to do more illustrating in the future.
Brenna can be contacted at bsenger.art@gmail.com.
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