2018 Speakers

PAMELA MULLOY is the editor of The New Quarterly and the creative director of the Wild Writers Literary Festival. She is also a writer with short fiction published in the UK and Canada. Her debut novel The Deserters was published by Véhicule Press in 2018.

Photo by Ayelet Tsabari.

Lamees Al Ethari is an Iraqi-Canadian writer and artist. She holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Waterloo, where she has been teaching academic and creative writing since 2015. Her poetry has been published in The Malpais Review and the anthology Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here and printed as broadsides. She has a forthcoming work in poetry, From the Wounded Banks of the Tigris (Fall 2018), and another in prose titled Waiting for the Rain: A Memoir (Spring 2019). She is currently working on her monograph, Resistance and Memory in Iraqi Women’s Life Narratives.

Katherine Ashenburg is the author of three books and many magazine and newspaper articles. She has written for The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Life, among other publications. Her books include The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die, and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, which was published in 12 countries and six languages. She has been a producer at CBC Radio and was The Globe and Mail‘s Arts and Books editor. In 2012, she won a Gold Medal at the National Magazine Awards for her article on old age. Sofie & Cecilia is her first novel. Photo by Joy von Tiedemann.

Sharon Bala’s bestselling debut novel, The Boat People, was a finalist for Canada Reads 2018 and the 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Last November she won the 2017 Writer’s Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for her short story “Butter Tea at Starbucks” (first published in The New Quarterly) and had a second story on the longlist. Sharon is a member of the Port Authority, a St. John’s writing group. Her short fiction has been published in: The Journey Prize 29, Hazlitt, Grain, PRISM International, The Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, Maisonneuve, Room, Riddle Fence, and in a collection called Racket. 

Mike Barnes is the author of ten books of poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir. He has won the Danuta Gleed Award and a National Magazine Awards Silver Medal for his short fiction, and the Edna Staebler Award for nonfiction. He lives in Toronto. Photo by Heather R. Simcoe.

Though trained as a physicist, Erin Bow is now a poet and children’s writer, working out of her garden shed in Kitchener, Ontario. She is the author of four novels for young adults: The fantasies Plain Kate and Sorrow’s Knot, and most recently the genre-bending duology, The Scorpion Rules and The Swan Riders. These books between them have a fistful of awards, including the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year honor. All her books will make you cry on the bus.

Countertenor Daniel Cabena is highly regarded in both Canada and Europe for prize-winning performances ranging from baroque to contemporary repertoire. This season he has appeared with Edmonton Opera, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and next season will include performances with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and Turning Point Ensemble. Daniel holds an Honours Bachelor of Music from Wilfrid Laurier University, a Doctorate of Music from l’Université de Montréal and a Masters in Specialized Early Music Performance from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

Claire Cameron led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and taught mountaineering, climbing and white-water rafting in Oregon. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a staff writer at The Millions. Her first novel, The Line Painter, won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, The Bear, was a #1 national bestseller and was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Last Neanderthal was a national bestseller and finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. She lives in Toronto. Photo by David Kerr.

Leonarda Carranza is a Central American born writer who now calls Brampton home. She holds a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education where her research examined humiliation and shaming practices in the classroom. In her writing, she draws on experiences of migration, loss and unbelonging. Her writing has been published in Room, The New Quarterly, Briarpatch magazine and Best Canadian Essays 2017. Her essay “Tongues” is part of Room Magazine’s first women of colour edition. She is the winner of Briarpatch magazine’s seventh annual Writing in the Margins contest for her piece, “The McGill Experiments.”

Anita Chong is a Senior Editor at McClelland & Stewart, where she edits literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir. Notable titles include Sharon Bala’s #1 national bestseller, The Boat People; Rebecca Rosenblum’s So Much Love; Amy Jones’s We’re All in This Together; JJ Lee’s The Measure of a Man; and Stacey May Fowles’s memoir, Baseball Life Advice. Forthcoming titles include new fiction by Richard Wagamese, Saleema Nawaz, Amy Jones, Michael Christie, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Tanis Rideout, and debut novelist Reena Patel. Anita also manages the Journey Prize for emerging Canadian writers and its associated anthology, The Journey Prize Stories. Photo by Tyson Erb.

Morteza Dehghani is a poet and literary translator who writes in English and Persian. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Send My Roots Rain, in English (published by North Waterloo Press, 2013) and The Whale Who Breaks the Surface of Morning in Persian (published in Iran by the Maya Press, 2016). He is a four-time winner of the Creative Writing Award at the University of Waterloo where he is just about to defend a PhD on elegy and the intersection of this poetic form with essayistic elegiac films. He is also currently translating a selection of poems by the American poet Robert Hass.

Antonio Michael Downing grew up in southern Trinidad, Northern Ontario, Brooklyn, and Kitchener. He is a musician, writer, and activist based in Toronto. His 2010 debut novel, Molasses (Blaurock Press), was published to critical acclaim. In 2017 he was named by the RBC Taylor Prize as one of Canada’s top Emerging Authors for nonfiction. His memoir, Becoming John Orpheus (Penguin Random House, Fall 2019), explores his obsession for radical identity transformations and how a tragic fire forced him to invent his “baddest, boldest self: John Orpheus.” Photo by Dave Winn.

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator. She has taught at Bishop’s University and at Concordia University, in CEGEPS, and for the Quebec Writers’ Federation. She has been editor-in-chief at Arc magazine, was a founding editor of the Icehouse Poetry imprint, and is currently associate editor with Linda Leith Publishing. Her work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and her collection of poems What if red ran out won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book. Photo by J. Parr.

Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award and the Giller Prize. His third novel, Carnival, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into 30 languages.

Ian Hamilton is the author of the Ava Lee series. The books have been shortlisted for numerous prizes, including the Arthur Ellis Award, the Barry Award, and the Lambda Literary Prize, and are national bestsellers. The Water Rat of Wanchai was the winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was named a best book of the year by Amazon.ca, the Toronto Star, and Quill & Quire. BBC Culture named Hamilton “One of the Ten Mystery/Crime Writers from the Last Thirty Years That Should Be on Your Bookshelf.” The series is being adapted for television.

Liz Harmer‘s stories and essays have been published in The Malahat Review, PRISM, Grain, The New Quarterly, Little Brother and other journals. She has won a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism, was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and was a finalist for a Glimmer Train Prize. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where her mentor was Charles Foran. She has also studied with David Bezmozgis, Richard Greene, Robert McGill and Richard Bausch. Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, she now lives with her husband and their three young daughters in southern California, where she is hard at work on a second novel.

David Huebert‘s fiction has won the CBC Short Story Prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize, and The Dalhousie Review‘s short story contest. His work has been published in magazines such as The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, enRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries. David’s short fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction, and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David recently completed a PhD at the University of Western Ontario, where his research focused on human-animal love in American literature.

Tasneem Jamal’s debut novel Where the Air Is Sweet was published to critical acclaim in 2014. Her writing has appeared in Chatelaine, Saturday Night magazine, and the Literary Review of Canada. She worked as a news editor at The Globe and Mail and before that as a copy editor at Saturday Night magazine. Currently a consulting editor with The New Quarterly, she is at work on a book-length memoir. She lives in Kitchener with her husband and two daughters.

Amanda Jernigan is the author of three collections of poetry—Groundwork (Biblioasis, 2011), All the Daylight Hours (Cormorant, 2013), and Years, Months, and Days (Biblioasis, 2018)—and of the chapbook The Temple (Baseline Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in journals in Canada and abroad, including Poetry, PN Review, The Walrus and The Nation; they have also been set to music, most recently by American composer Zachary Wadsworth. She is the editor of The Essential Richard Outram (Porcupine’s Quill, 2011) and, with Evan Jones, of Earth and Heaven: An Anthology of Myth Poetry (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2015). She is an essayist as well as a poet, and has written for the stage. Photo by John Haney.

Cori Martin is a Canadian poet, librettist, playwright, and formerly Lecturer in English at The Ohio State University.  Often cross-disciplinary in nature, her poetry once took the form of a verse play, and regularly takes inspiration from the visual arts.  Musical settings of her work have been premiered by New Music Now and the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music, Waterloo (Babel: A Choral Symphony), the Grand Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Kitchener (“Christmas Cattle”), Ex Cathedra in London and Birmingham, U.K. (“The Portinari Nativity”), among other performances, and recorded on the CD Winter Nights by the Pax Christi Chorale and Orchestra, Toronto.

Michael Redhill is a Giller Prize-winning novelist, poet and playwright. He is the author of the novels Consolation, longlisted for Man Booker Prize; Martin Sloane, a finalist for the Giller Prize; and most recently, Bellevue Square, winner of the 2017 Giller Prize. He has written a novel for young adults, four collections of poetry and two plays, including the internationally celebrated Goodness. He also writes a series of crime novels under the name Inger Ash Wolfe. He lives in Toronto, Ontario. Photo by Amanda Withers.

Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The Stone Thrower was adapted into a children’s book in 2016 and was shortlisted for a Canadian picture book award. Richardson is a book columnist and guest host on CBC’s q. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario where she founded and serves as the Artistic Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Her debut novel, Gutter Child is coming Fall 2020 with HarperCollins Canada. Photo by Arden Wray.

Richard Sanger’s new collection, Dark Wood, was published this year. His previous collections are Shadow Cabinet and Calling Home; his poems have appeared in many publications in Canada, the US and Britain, including the London Review of Books and Poetry Review. His plays include Not Spain, Two Words for Snow, Hannah’s Turn and Dive as well as translations of Calderon, Lope de Vega and Lorca. He has also published essays, reviews and journalism. He lives in Toronto.

Karen Schindler is the publisher of Baseline Press in London, ON—a micro-press producing hand-sewn poetry chapbooks since 2011. Karen’s own poetry and book reviews have appeared in journals such as The Malahat Review and The Fiddlehead, and her writing has been short-listed for the CBC Literary Awards and Descant‘s Winston Collins Prize. In 2017 Karen stepped down after serving over ten years as Managing Director of the Poetry London Reading Series. She has also worked as a chemical engineer, a systems analyst, and a high-school mathematics teacher.

Susan Scott is the editor of Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers (Caitlin Press, 2019)—an anthology in celebration of all things edgy, iffy, unorthodox, and sublime in the lives of women writers. Susan serves as TNQ’s lead nonfiction editor and as associate director of the Wild Writers Festival. As of 2018, she stepped up to direct Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat, another TNQ outreach venture. She is scouting for a home for Sainted Dirt, her reckonings with land, language, family, and imperfect teaware. Photo by Ron Grimes.

Sharron Smith, formerly the Manager of Bibliographic Services at the Kitchener Public Library and past chair of the One Book, One Community program, is an award-winning librarian and published author with more than 25 years experience helping readers’ find their next great read.  Currently on faculty at the University of Western Ontario, she’s passionate about reading and an active advocate of Canadian literature. Photo by Charlotte Prong

Claire Tacon‘s first novel, In the Field, was the winner of the 2010 Metcalf-Rooke Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Bronwen Wallace Award, the CBC Literary Prize and has appeared in journals and anthologies such as The New Quarterly, SubTerrain and Best Canadian Short Stories. Claire is a lecturer at St. Jerome’s University and her second book, In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo is out with Wolsak & Wynn.

Emily Urquhart is a journalist with a doctorate in folklore and draws on both backgrounds in her writing. She won a National Magazine Award for her work, which has appeared in Azure, Hakai Magazine, Reader’s Digest and The Walrus. Her first book, Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, was a Globe and Mail Best Book and was shortlisted for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her husband and two children. Photo by Andrew Trant.

Brent van Staalduinen is the author of Saints, Unexpected (Invisible Publishing), a novel of magical realism. His short fiction has won a number of awards, notably the Bristol Short Story Prize, The Fiddlehead Best Fiction Award, and the Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and has been featured The New Quarterly, The Sycamore Review, Prairie Fire, EVENT, Litro, The Writer Magazine, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and teaches writing at Redeemer University College. He lives and writes in Hamilton.

Paul Vermeersch is a poet, professor, artist and editor. His 2014 book Don’t Let It End Like This Tell Them I Said Something is the product of his MFA thesis exploring the poetics of remixing and recycling texts for which he received the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. A finalist for the 2011 Trillium Book Award for The Reinvention of the Human Hand, his most recent book is Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy. A professor in the Bachelors of Creative Writing & Publishing Program at Sheridan College and senior editor of Wolsak and Wynn Publishers, he lives in Toronto. Photo by Justice Darragh of Fossil and Bone Photography.

David Worsley became co-owner of Words Worth Books in 2011, after managing the bookstore for 12 years. In 2006 he won the prestigious Hand-Selling Award from HarperCollins Canada. Dave is currently an editor at The New Quarterly and sits on their Wild Writers Festival program committee. He has also volunteered with the CKWR FM Monday with the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and facilitates speaker and lecturer events, including a men’s only book club, at Words Worth Books. David has over 25 years experience in the book industry and is an exceptional recommender of mystery and crime titles.

Janice Zawerbny is a senior editor at Biblioasis and teaches editing at Ryerson University. She began her publishing career at Coach House Books, followed by positions at Lester Publishing and Descant magazine, Somerville House Books, Key Porter Books, Thomas Allen Publishers, and House of Anansi Press. Authors she has worked with include Katherena Vermette (Winner Amazon First Novel Award), Zoe Whittall (Scotiabank-Giller Prize finalist), Tamas Dobozy (Winner of the Writers’ Trust Award for Fiction), Irina Kovalyova (Winner of the KOBO Emerging Writer Prize), and Lynn Crosbie (Trillium Book Award finalist).