CAROL SHABEN is an award-winning author who worked as journalist in Jerusalem, Occupied Territories. Her first book, Into the Abyss, a national bestseller, was selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and is an Amazon.com Editor’s Pick and Best Nonfiction book. Carol’s second book, The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cario’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom, ­co-written with Egyptian Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, was long listed for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize, named one of The Globe & Mail’s 100 Best Books of the Year, and won the Ontario Historical Society Huguenot Award. She is a Faculty Mentor at the University of Kings MFA in Creative Nonfiction.

YASUKO THANH (she/her) is a writer and a creative writing instructor at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC. She is the author of two novels, a short story collection, and a memoir. Her first novel, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Her memoir, Mistakes to Run With was a finalist for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes.