ABOUT HELD MAGAZINE

HELD Magazine is an online artistic and literary journal that aims to explore how all systems are interconnected, interdependent, and ever-shifting. The magazine is, itself, a system: a system of editors, designers, artists, and writers; of creators and audiences; a system where artists and writers can go to make meaning in a time where meaning is fraught. 

HELD focuses on increasing access and opportunities for diverse voices: to support writers and artists who have experienced barriers to publication and who have been systematically marginalized in the literary community. We want to create a space of experimentation and hybridity, a place of play and emergence. We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, experimental writing, and visual art. 


HELD Magazine is led by MFA students at the University of Guelph. We are grateful for the funding we have received through the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Enhancement Fund, the Student Life Enhancement Fund, and the Creating in a Time of Coronavirus Fund, as well as for the support we have received from the School of English and Theatre Studies, the School of Fine Art and Music, the MFA in Creative Writing, and the MFA in Studio Art.

Team Members

 
 
 
 

Torri Blue

torri blue is an autistic writer and lyricist, an amateur gardener and budding ecologist, a late bloomer, a queer mother, and a friendly curmudgeon. As a poet-scholar, torri's focus is on the intersection of autistic and poetic embodiment--and the possibilities of autistic language to transform our ecological ethic. her scholarship on Autistic Poetics and Mary Oliver's poetry was recently published in the peer-reviewed "Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture," and her poems have been set for choral arrangements and used in short films. she is working on her debut novel from a farm in Ontario, where she lives with her wife, Alex, and their son, Auden.

 
 
 
 

Brittany Coy-Pinnock

Brittany is a Toronto-based writer and freelance editor. She’s been published in Arrival and The Humber Literary Review. She is the creator and editing manager of the writing blog, Eye of the Writer, where she chronicles her journey in the writing industry, and shares articles about her favourite books and insights into the writerly life. Brittany is a creative writing MFA candidate at the University of Guelph, with a primary focus on fiction. Her work incorporates her interests from her psychology background and often explores themes of relationships, memory, behaviour, and characters who confront difficult, often buried emotions. When she’s not writing, she firmly embraces chaotic shenanigans, exploring Toronto in search of her next favourite meal or view of Lake Ontario.

 
 
 
 

Em Dial

Em Dial (she/they) is a writer born and raised in the Bay Area of California, currently living in Toronto, Ontario. The author of "In the Key of Decay" (Palimpsest Press, 2024), her work can also be found in the Literary Review of Canada, Arc Poetry Magazine, the Permanent Record Anthology from Nightboat Books, and elsewhere. 

 
 
 
 

Joseph Donato

 
 
 
 

Veronica Fredricks

Veronica Fredericks is a teacher and writer. Her work has been published in Queen's Quarterly,  The New Quarterly, ROOM Magazine, and Briarpatch Magazine. She is currently in her first year at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA program. 

 
 
 
 

Jackie George

Jackie George is a queer, Cuban American fiction writer from South Florida. She graduated from Harvard College with a BA in English in 2024 and is currently pursuing a creative writing MFA at the University of Guelph. Her work explores themes of identity, family, belonging, and politics.

 
 
 
 

Lawson Hannaford

Lawson Hannaford (they/them) is a multidisciplinary creator whose plays, fiction, and illustrations explore themes of queerness, transness, mental illness, and striving to find meaning in life. They wrote and directed two award-winning plays which were performed in Halifax and across Nova Scotia. Their fiction and poetry has been published in Fathom Magazine, and the Bitchin’ Kitsch. If they’re not writing or doodling, you can find them drinking matcha, reading queer ancient history, or stopping to say hello to random cats they see on the street. follow them @lookitslawson :)

 
 
 
 

Nina Katz

 
 
 
 

Unice Leim

Unice Leim is a queer, trans, and non-binary writer who currently studies in the University of Guelph’s MFA Creative Writing program. Their writing explores identity, family and current social issues through a queer lens. Unice has published three pieces with the Goethe Literary Magazine and their adapted play based on the Sherlock Holmes short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” premiered with the Chaincourt Theatre Company in 2024. Recently they were a Reader at the Speakeasy Reading series, the Eden Mills Writers Festival “Emerge!” Panel, and the Emerging Writers Reading Series. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, Unice now calls Toronto their home.

 
 
 
 

Alexandra McKay

 
 
 
 

Kelly Pedro

Kelly Pedro (she/her) has won the CRAFT Literary Flash Prose Prize and was a 2024 SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow. Her fiction has appeared in CRAFT, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, New Flash Fiction Review, jmww, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and was shortlisted for the 2025 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction and Room’s 2022 Fiction Prize. She lives on the Haldimand Tract—land that was promised to the Six Nations of the Grand River. Learn more about her work at kellypedro.ca

 
 
 
 

Kate Reider Collins

Kate Reider Collins is a poet and nonfiction writer who is a two-time alumnus of Banff’s Writing Residencies. Her poetry has been published in The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire and Moth & Rust. TNQ’s long-listed one of her essays for the 2025 Edna Staebler contest. A creative nonfiction piece is forthcoming in Geist in Spring 2026. Her writing explores loss, memory and imaginative leaps. Kate lives in Toronto. She’s currently an MFA student at Guelph.