Rita Sirignano is a writer, painter, and the Program Associate and Youth Program Director at Wordfest. Her freelance writing has appeared in most Canadian publications, including The National Post, Ottawa Magazine, The Calgary Herald,  Avenue, Swerve, and anthologized in Fact and Arguments: Selected Essays from The Globe and Mail. She was one of the curators of the original Poetry in Motion project which put excerpts from the work of Alberta poets in unused advertising space on Calgary transit, and in a previous life worked in museums and art galleries in New York City.  A graduate of The Rhode Island School of Design, her paintings are in the collection of The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and many private collections across North America. She loves all dogs (poodles in particular) and has been working on a memoir for more than 20 years that she will probably never finish.