REBECCA WOOD BARRETT is an award-winning writer and filmmaker living in Whistler, British Columbia. Her short fiction has been published in Room, The Antigonish Review, and Pique Newsmagazine. She has made over 35 short films, which have broadcast on TV and won the People’s Choice Award three times. Rebecca is a passionate advocate for the literary arts, and enjoys supporting emerging and established writers in their projects through teaching, editing, career consultation and assisting writers’ critique groups in their formation. Her middle-grade children’s book My Best Friend is Extinct is her debut publication.

Visit: In-person

JOHNNIE CHRISTMAS is a #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist and a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York. He’s the writer of the Image Comics sci-fi romance series Tartarus and Crema. His book Firebug, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and it earned him a Joe Shuster Outstanding Cartoonist nomination. He’s perhaps best known for co-creating the series Angel Catbird with celebrated writer Margaret Atwood and adapting William Gibson’s lost screenplay for Alien 3 into a critically acclaimed graphic novel. His credits also include co-creating the pre-apocalyptic thriller Sheltered. Johnnie makes Vancouver, BC his home and is currently working on three new middle-grade graphic novels, of which Swim Team is one.

Visit: In-person

PHILIPPA DOWDING is a children’s author, poet, musician and copywriter. She has won many industry awards and has had poetry and short fiction published in journals across North America. Her children’s books have been nominated for numerous literary awards in Canada and abroad, including the SYRCA Diamond Willow, OLA Silver Birch, OLA Red Maple, Hackmatack and White Raven awards. In 2017, Myles and the Monster Outside was an OLA Silver Birch Express Honour Book and her 2021 novel, Firefly, won a Governor General’s Literary Award. Philippa Dowding currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Visit: Virtual

THE FAN BROTHERS are the award-winning writing and illustrating duo Terry Fan and Eric Fan. Terry Fan received his formal art training at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. His work is a blend of traditional and contemporary techniques, using ink or graphite mixed with digital. He spends his days (and nights) creating magical paintings, portraits, and prints. Terry is the co-creator of The Night Gardener, It Fell from the Sky, and Lizzy and the Cloud. Eric Fan is an artist and writer who lives in Toronto. Born in Hawaii and raised in Toronto, he attended the Ontario College of Art and Design, where he studied illustration, sculpture, and film. He has a passion for vintage bikes, clockwork contraptions, and impossible dreams. Eric is the co-creator of The Night Gardener, It Fell from the Sky, and Lizzy and the Cloud.

Visit: Virtual

JEN FERGUSON is Michif/Métis and white, an activist, an intersectional feminist, an auntie, and an accomplice armed with a PhD in English and creative writing. Her first book for adults, Border Markers, is a collection of interrelated flash fiction stories. Her essay “Off Balance” was selected for the Best Canadian Essays 2020. She lives on Gabrielino Tongva territory (Los Angeles, California) and teaches fiction writing at Loyola Marymount University. She also teaches at the University of British Columbia through their Optional Residency MFA program. The Summer of Bitter And Sweet is her debut YA novel.

Visit: Virtual

RACHEL HARTMAN was born in Kentucky, but has lived in a variety of places including Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, England, and Japan. She now lives in Vancouver, BC, with her family, their whippet, and a talking frog and salamander. Hartman was the recipient of the 2013 William C. Morris YA Debut Award which honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature. That book was Seraphina (which was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and a New York Times bestseller), and she has since written a number of books set in the kingdom of Goredd, her latest, In the Serpent’s Wake, being one.

Visit: Virtual

LAWRENCE HILL is the internationally bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including Beatrice and Croc Harry, The Book of Negroes (which was made into a six-part TV mini-series) and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, also became national bestsellers. Hill’s nonfiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life (the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures), and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He is a member of the Order of Canada, and a winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

Visit: Virtual

MICHAEL HUTCHINSON is a member of the Misipawistik Cree Nation, north of Winnipeg. He is the author of the Mighty Muskrats Mystery series for young readers. He has spent much of his career telling the stories of Indigenous peoples and advocating for First Nation families and communities across Canada. The Case of the Burgled Bundle is the third book in the Mighty Muskrats Mystery series.

Visit: Virtual

SUSAN JUBY is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of eight acclaimed novels for teenagers. Her debut novel, Alice, I Think (the first of the Alice MacLeod trilogy) was made into a successful television series. The Truth Commission was the winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Award, and was shortlisted for several other awards and named to several “Best of” lists. She is also the author of a memoir, Nice Recovery, and the adult comic novels The Woefield Poultry Collective and The Republic of Dirt. Susan Juby lives in Nanaimo, BC.

Visit: Virtual

FIONA TINWEI LAM is Vancouver’s 6th Poet Laureate. She has published three collections of poetry and a children’s book. Her poems have been featured in Best Canadian Poetry, the League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause and Poem in Your Pocket programs, as well as in award-winning poetry videos produced in collaboration with filmmakers which have screened worldwide.  Shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize and other awards, her work has been included in over 40 anthologies. Lam is available for two Writers in the Classroom events, during which she will be conducting poetry workshops. After discussing the key components of modern-day poems, Lam will encourage students to write engaging and vivid poems of their own about place and/or ordinary objects through a series of writing exercises and prompts.

Visit: In-person (Gr. 10-12)

ABDI NAZEMIAN is the author of Like a Love Story, a Stonewall Honor Book, and The Authentics. His novel The Walk-In Closet won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction. His screenwriting credits include the films The Artist’s Wife, The Quiet, and Menendez: Blood Brothers and the television series The Village and Almost Family. He has been an executive producer and associate producer on numerous films, including Call Me by Your Name, Little Woods, and The House of Tomorrow. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children, and their dog, Disco.

Visit: Virtual

KAI CHENG THOM is a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2018), the children’s picture book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, and the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes at the End of the World (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2020). Thom won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers in 2017. Her latest book is the children’s picture book For Laika: The Dog Who Learned the Names of the Stars, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching.

Visit: Virtual

COLE PAULS is a Champagne and Aishihik First Nations (CAFN) citizen and Tahltan comic artist, illustrator, and printmaker hailing from Haines Junction (Yukon Territory) with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University. Residing in Vancouver, Pauls focuses on his two comic series, the first being Pizza Punks: a self contained comic strip about punks eating pizza, the other being Dakwäkãda Warriors. In 2017, Pauls won Broken Pencil Magazine’s Best Comic and Best Zine of the Year Award for Dakwäkãda Warriors II. In 2020, Dakwäkãda Warriors won Best Work in an Indigenous Language from the Indigenous Voices Awards and was nominated for the Doug Wright Award categories, The Egghead & The Nipper.

Visit: Virtual

DAVID A. ROBERTSON is the author of numerous books for young readers including When We Were Alone and On the Trapline which won the 2017 and 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards, respectively. The Barren Grounds, the first book in the middle-grade The Misewa Saga series, received a starred review from Kirkus and was a Kirkus and Quill & Quire best middle-grade book of 2020, as well as a USBBY and Texas Lone Star selection, and nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch Award. A sought-after speaker and educator, as well as recent recipient of the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Freedom to Read Award, Robertson is a member of the Norway House Cree Nation and currently lives in Winnipeg.

David A. Robertson is booked for a Writers in the Classroom event with students from Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA).

MONIQUE GRAY SMITH is Cree, Lakota and Scottish and a proud mom of teenage twins. She is an accomplished consultant, writer and international speaker. Her novel Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience won the 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature. She is the author of My Heart Fills with Happiness and several other bestselling books for children. Her middle-grade book Speaking Our Truth received a starred review from Kirkus and shortlisted for the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award in 2018. Monique and her family are blessed to live on the traditional territory of the WSÁNEĆ people near Victoria, British Columbia.

Monique Gray Smith is booked for a Writers in the Classroom event with students from Heron’s Nest Education Centre for Young Parents.

Myriam Chancy was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A Guggenheim Fellow, she currently holds the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in California. Her first novel, Spirit of Haiti, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book, Canada/Caribbean) in 2004. The Loneliness of Angels won the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award (Best Fiction) and was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in 2011.

Myriam Chancy is booked for a Writers in the Classroom event with students from UBC Creative Writing.