RUEBEN GEORGE is Sundance Chief and a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN). After working as a family counsellor for twenty years, he became manager of the TWN’s Sacred Trust initiative to protect the unceded Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters from the proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Over the past decade, he has travelled across the world and built alliances with Indigenous people fighting for water, land, and human rights, and has become an internationally renowned voice for such issues. Rueben has been adopted and made a Sun Dance Chief by two Lakota families, and incorporates his cultural and spiritual teachings in all aspects of his life and work, including his work as a consultant to All Nations Cannabis.

JEN SOOKFONG LEE was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her books include The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, The Shadow List, and Finding Home. Jen acquires and edits for ECW Press and co-hosts the literary podcast Can’t Lit.

JONI LOW is a writer and curator whose practice explores interconnection, intercultural conversations, and sensory experience. A CGS-D SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, she is researching artists who are sensing otherwise towards different ways of knowing – and how this resonates with neuroscience, somatic therapies, decolonization and healing. Low has presented exhibitions across Canada, and has published writing widely in catalogues and journals. In 2022 she co-edited the anthology What Are Our Supports? – 23 artists reflecting on supports during precarious times. Low has served on numerous award juries and is on the editorial board of The Capilano Review.

JEFF O’BRIEN is an art historian and curator in the department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines contemporary lens-based practices in the Middle East (specifically, the recuperation, repair, and reclamation of images from archival sources), and the wide-ranging forums in which these images are displayed and deployed (from exhibitions to human rights venues such as the UN). In addition to publishing widely, he is on the editorial board of the journal Afterimage, and has presented his work and given lectures in Jordan, Palestine, the United States and Canada.

MICHAEL SIMPSON is Lecturer in the School of Geography & Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

C.A. TANAKA is a multiracial trans writer, artist and librarian challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other while exploring archive and memory in a socio-political context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Their first YA book, Baby Drag Queen was published with Orca Books in April 2023. They’ve also published work in Resonance: Essays on the Craft of Life and Writing with Anvil Press and This Will Only Take A Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction with Guernica Editions.

HENRY TSANG is an artist who explores the spatial politics of history, language, community, food, and cultural translation in relationship to place. His artworks take the form of gallery exhibitions, 360-degree video walking tours, curated dinners, and public art. Henry teaches at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver.