JORDAN ABEL is a queer Nisga'a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps, Un/inhabited, Injun, NISHGA, and Empty Spaces. Abel has won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Award and is a Professor at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.

GWEN AUBE is a working-class writer living in Montreal, Quebec. Her work has appeared in The Gay & Lesbian Review, The New Orleans Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Expat Press, and Room Magazine.

ELEE KRALJII GARDINER is the author of serpentine loop, Trauma Head, and sometimes, forest. She was the editor of the anthologies V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Against Death: 35 Essays on Living. Kraljii Gardiner works across disciplines and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature. She is Vancouver's seventh poet laureate.

JESS HOUSTY ('Cúagilákv) is a parent, writer and grassroots activist with Heiltsuk (Indigenous) and mixed settler ancestry. They serve their community as an herbalist and land-based educator alongside broader work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. Housty lives with their family in the unceded ancestral territory in Bella Bella, BC.

EVE JOSEPH lives on the unceded traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples. Her first books of poetry The Startled Heart and The Secret Signature of Things were nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award. Her memoir, In the Slender Margin, won the Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize. Her 2018 collection of poetry, Quarrels, was nominated for several prizes, and won the Griffin Poetry Prize.

MEGHAN KEMP-GEE is an award-winning poet, teacher, and scriptwriter. She is the author of The Animal in the Room. She co-created the graphic novel One More Year and co-edited the sports-comics anthology Come Out and Play. She lives in North Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis, The Dyzgraphxst, and Code Noir, which won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Lubrin’s work has also been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, 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. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. She was the Guest Curator of the 2025 Vancouver Writers Fest.

BILLEH NICKERSON is an author, editor and educator whose previous six books include McPoems, the City of Vancouver-Book-Award-Nominated Artificial Cherry, and Duct-Taped Roses. He is also the co-editor of the ground-breaking Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets. He is a former Associate Dean, and long-time faculty in the Creative Writing department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

ROB TAYLOR is the author of five poetry collections, including Weather and The News, and the editor of the anthologies What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. He teaches creative writing at the University of the Fraser Valley, where he also runs the Fraser Valley Writers Festival.