Meet Our Residents
Meet Our Residents
2025
Amorina Valerie Ahlsell
Swedish Writer
Having studied creative writing, film and journalism, Amorina Ahlsell now writes short stories, poetry, and screenplays. In 2024 she was awarded the WIFT director’s award, by Frame Film Festival, for her dystopian sci-fi Dansrum för en (Dancing on My Own), a heartbreaking story about loneliness in our thoroughly digitalized time. Travelling to France from Gothenberg, Amorina’s main aim of her residency was to write a new screenplay for her next animated short film, a poetic monologue about the loss of a child through miscarriage.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Bernadette Mertens-McAllister
Canadian Artist
Originally from Belgium, Bernadette Mertens-McAllister now lives and works in British Columbia. One of her proudest achievements was helping the Raincoast Conservation Society to establish the Great Bear Rainforest Protected and Managed area in the 90s. Environment and nature were her focus then, and are still, inspiring much of her fine art work. During her residency she developed a series that explored her relationship with the Studio Faire environment and memories of her own childhood in Europe.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Cameron Brent Johnson
American Writer
Though his first love is books, Cameron Brent Johnson has developed the skill to translate what he loves most about novels into screenplays. Now a full-time Screenwriter based in LA, he has written scripts for Netflix, Showtime and more, including Series 1 Episode 8 of Yellowjackets (Showtime) which he co-wrote with Liz Phang. Cameron’s family lineage goes back to a region near here, in Tarbes. Though his mother’s ancestors emigrated from France to southern Louisiana in the early 1800s, the script he focused on during his time at Studio Faire takes place in South West France and is inspired by that lineage.
cameronbrentjohnson.squarespace.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Sarah Bartnicka
Canadian Writer
Toronto-based writer and editor Sarah Bartnicka came to Studio Faire during a career transition to focus on a collection of creative essays about the economic and societal challenges facing young adults today. Back at home, Sarah is the editor of Milk Bag, a newsletter covering business and culture in Canada. Before that, she was the founding editor of The Peak, which is Canada’s most-ready daily business newsletter. On the side, she also writes Airplane Mode, a travel newsletter.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Anne Carter
Canadian Writer
Anne Carter is the author of over twenty published books, mostly for young readers, and her writing has twice earned the CLA Best Book of the Year for Children Award, the Jane Addam’s Honor Award for peace as well as numerous nominations for reading programs across Canada. She’s currently in the process of revising her new novel about a fictional flooding, inspired by the current climate crisis facing all of us but especially young people today.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Roya Amirsoleymani
American Writer
Roya Amirsoleymani is an independent curator, writer, producer, and project manager in contemporary art and performance, based on the unceded lands of the Twana people on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington. She came to Studio Faire to continue her development of ‘Touch’, an experimental narrative and archival project about her best friend, Ernie, who was denied cancer treatment by insurance and died at just 36 years old.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Natasha Davies
British Writer
Searching for the perfect balance of solitude and community, and a break from her work as a copywriter, Tasha Davies travelled to Nérac from Cheshire to focus on her writing in our ‘Usher Hall’, as well as to soak up the setting in the local coffee shops and bars. This opportunity gave her the time to advance her novel about the lives and complex relationships of a set of triplets, which will mark her debut as a writer.
daviesnatasha22201.wixsite.com/tashascribbles
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.