ELAMIN ABDELMAHMOUD’s work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Rolling Stone, and others. He is the author of the number one national bestseller Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces. He was the 2023 Guest Curator for the Vancouver Writers Fest.

KATE BLACK’s essays have been published in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Maisonneuve. In 2020, she was selected as one of Canada’s top emerging voices in non-fiction by the RBC Taylor Prize and the National Magazine Awards. She grew up in Alberta, and lives in Vancouver.

NICK CUTTER is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Troop (which is currently being developed for film with producer James Wan), The Deep, Little Heaven, and The Handyman Method, cowritten with Andrew F. Sullivan. Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for Craig Davidson, whose much-lauded literary fiction includes Rust and Bone, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, and, most recently, the short story collection Cascade. His story “Medium Tough” was selected by author Jennifer Egan for The Best American Short Stories 2014. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

RODDY DOYLE is the author of thirteen novels, including the The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and, most recently, The Women Behind The Door, published this year. He co-wrote the screenplay for The Commitments, and wrote the scripts for The Snapper and The Van. His most recent screen work was the script for Rosie, released in 2018. He is a co-founder of Fighting Words, which was set up to help and encourage children and young people throughout Ireland to write creatively. He lives in Dublin.

CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry, and the Globe & Mail named her Poet of the Year. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction, and includes stories listed for the Journey Prize (2019, 2020), Toronto Book Award (2018) and the Shirley Jackson Award (2021). Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.

KIRSTEN MCDOUGALL is a novelist, short story writer and creative writing lecturer. Her 2017 novel Tess was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards and shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award. She’s a Killer was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2022. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

ANDREA WARNER lives in Vancouver, BC, on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her books include The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing, Rise Up and Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music, and Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography.

ROBERT J. WIERSEMA is the author of three novels, a novella, a collection of short stories, and a book of nonfiction. He is one of Canada’s most recognized and respected book reviewers, with his work appearing regularly in The Toronto Star, Quill & Quire, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and numerous other publications. Wiersema lives in Victoria where he is a professor of creative writing at Vancouver Island University. (BRITISH COLUMBIA)

JENNY HEIJUN WILLS is a transnationally and transracially adopted Korean Canadian writer who currently lives in Winnipeg (Treaty 1). She is the author of Everything and Nothing at all: Essays and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction prize winning Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. A memoir. She is professor of English at the University of Winnipeg.