DENNIS LEE, born in 1939, has published some forty books of poetry and prose for adults and children. Consistently acclaimed as a master of his art, he has been praised as “one of the finest poets in the English language.” Heart Residence, Lee’s Collected Poems, was published in 2017.

CANISIA LUBRIN, author of Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst, has won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize. She coordinates the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Her debut fiction, Code Noir: Metamorphoses, won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. She is the 2025 Vancouver Writers Fest Guest Curator.

MARC PEREZ is a Filipino poet and writer living in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Fiddlehead, EVENT Magazine, decomp journal, CV2, PRISM international, and Vallum, among others. A recipient of grants from the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, he has a BFA from the UBC School of Creative Writing. He is the author of the chapbook, Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020), and Dayo is his first full-length poetry collection.

KAREN SOLIE grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her five previous collections of poetry–Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, and The Caiplie Caves –have won or been shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, Griffin Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and more. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she splits her time between Scotland and Canada.

PAUL VERMEERSCH is a poet, multimedia artist, and literary editor. His last book of poetry was Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995–2020, followed in 2025 by NMLCT. A professor of creative writing and publishing at Sheridan College, he also edits his own imprint, Buckrider Books, for Wolsak & Wynn Publishers. He lives in Toronto, ON.

KATHERENA VERMETTE is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer from Treaty 1 territory. Her father’s roots run deep in this land, dating back over two centuries, and her mother’s side is Mennonite. vermette received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for her first book, North End Love Songs, and wide acclaim for her second collection of poems, river woman. The Break, a novel, won many awards including the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and was a bestseller in Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, katherena lives with her family in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River.

ISABELLA WANG is the author of Pebble Swing, a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her work has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award and The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. Wang’s writing has appeared in over thirty literary journals and five anthologies.