Our Team

Tanis MacDonald

Host

Tanis MacDonald is the author of six books, including Out of Line: Daring to Be an Artist Outside the Big City. She has been an invited performer at the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, Saskatchewan Festival of Words, Kingston Writers Festival, Growing Room Festival (Vancouver), Basement Revue (Toronto) and Windsor Book Festival, as well as in Waterloo City Council.

Tanis has been awarded the Open Seasons Awards for Nonfiction and the Bliss Carman Prize for Poetry, and her most recent book, Mobile, was long listed for the Toronto Book Award in 2020. She won the Robert Kroetsch Teaching Award in 2017.

Tanis’s interviews with Canadian writers have been published in Contemporary Verse 2, The New Quarterly, and Across Cultures/Across Borders.

She has taught a generation of writers across Canada, most recently as a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

She is a nationally known writer, interviewer, reviewer, and writing instructor.

She is originally from the prairies and has lived in Waterloo as a guest on the traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishnaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples, since 2006.

http://www.tanismacdonald.com/

Frances Roberts Reilly

Executive Producer

Frances Roberts Reilly is is the Executive Producer of Watershed Writers. She is a seasoned broadcasting professional having worked at BBC, CBC, Global Television and Vision TV as a producer, director and writer. She

As an independent producer, she has produced award-winning documentaries on human rights and women’s rights.

With her Romani/Gypsy heritage, Frances is an internationally published Romani poet and author. She has been invited to participate on a Romani Women in the Media panel hosted by Travellers’ Times, as well as the panel on Romani education at the International Roma Congress 2021.

https://francesrobertsreilly.wordpress.com/

Brendon Highmore

Technical Producer

Brendon is the Technical Producer for the Watershed Writers. He is also the digital marketer for the show, collecting and collating social media metrics, as well as posting to and maintaining the Watershed Writers website and its links to You Tube, Facebook and Twitter.

Brendon has completed many videography and editing assignments for a variety of projects. He is Technical Producer on the X-Camera talks about local artists for Inter Arts Matrix series, that’s when he’s not doing pro bono work for local causes. As well, Brendon co-led an on-mic workshop training session for radio presenters.

Brendon served as Technical Producer for the Promenade community magazine show on CKWR FM 98.5 Community Radio for 18 months.

Brendon graduated from the Conestoga College Broadcast Television program in 2016.

Martin de Groot

Editor

Martin de Groot is the program editor for the Promenade community radio magazine, a project of the Commons Studio at The Working Centre and CKWR FM 98.5, Canada’s first community radio station. Martin wrote the Saturday arts and culture column for the Waterloo Region Record from 1997-2019.

https://marinusdegroot.ca/