Welcome to the Women Writing podcast. In this episode, I’m taking a coffee break with award-winning poet Callista Markotich. And check out Callista’s Women Writing feature article here.

Callista Markotich is a former teacher, principal and Superintendent of Education in Eastern Ontario, living gratefully with Don, her husband of sixty years, on the shore of Lake Ontario in Kingston Ontario, traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Nations. Her poems have been published in Canadian literary magazines across our beautiful provinces, including Room, Pulp Literature, Freefall, Grain, Prairie Fire, Arc Poetry, The New Quarterly, Syncopation Literary Journal, Vallum, The Nashwaak Review, The Antigonish Review and Riddle Fence, and in several American and British journals. Her poems have received first, second and third place awards in Canadian contests, and she is particularly proud of the poems selected in the 2025 The New Quarterly’s Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest. Her first collection, Wrap in a Big White Towel, published by Frontenac House in 2024, was a finalist for the 2025 Gerald Lampert Memorial First Book Award. Callista’s recent work has received Pushcart and National Magazine nominations. She is contributing editor for Arc Poetry.

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