2026 Featured Authors

GARY BARWIN is a writer, musician, and multimedia artist and the author of thirty-five books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His novel Yiddish for Pirates was a national bestseller, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction. Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy was chosen for Hamilton Reads, won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature for Fiction. The winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ Life Membership Award, he has been twice shortlisted for their Spoken Word Award. Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

ALEX BERTRAM is a writer and educator based in Victoria, BC. Originally from Melbourne, she has worked in publishing in Australia and the UK. She holds a doctorate in creative writing and teaches in Continuing Studies at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University, Princeton Adult School, and the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria. Unequivocal Magic: Sarah Bernhardt and the Journey of a Portrait (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2026) is her debut work of creative nonfiction that speaks to the quiet power of photographs and their hidden creativity. Tracing the history of a 1910 portrait of the legendary French actress, it explores the image’s allure and current relevance in the light of celebrity and representations of women.

QUILL CHRISTIE-PETERS is an Anishinaabe educator and self-taught visual artist from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation located in Treaty 3 territory. She is the creator and director of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a master’s degree in Indigenous governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love. She has spoken at Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and California College of the Arts, and her written work can be found in GUTS magazine and Canadian Art. She is also a mother, beadwork artist, and traditional tattoo practitioner following the protocols of her community. All of her work can be found at @raunchykwe.

AIMÉE DUNN is the publisher of Palimpsest Press, an award-winning independent literary press based in Windsor ON. Aimée has a degree in English Literature and Language from the University of Windsor and a graduate certificate in Publishing from Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the Vice-President of the Literary Press Group of Canada’s Board of Directors and a member-at-large on the board of Franco-Sol Guarderie. She lives in Windsor with her husband and children. Her pronouns are she/her.

KIM ECHLIN is a Canadian novelist, translator, editor and teacher. She has written seven novels. She has travelled around the world for her research. The Disappeared is translated into 20 languages, won the Barnes and Noble prize and was short-listed for The Giller. Speak, Silence, about women and justice at the International Criminal Court, won the City of Toronto Book award. 

She won the CBC Creative Nonfiction award and the Dalton Camp award for nonfiction. Her new collection of essays, Tell Others, reflects on literature and witness. She is a board member of PEN International. Author proceeds for this book will be donated to PEN.

Lamees Al Ethari is an Associate Professor and author of From the Wounded Banks of the Tigris (Baseline Press 2018) and Waiting for the Rain: An Iraqi Memoir (Mawenzi House 2019). Both works reflect on her experiences of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, the violent aftermath, and her family’s migration to Canada. She is also the co-editor of Mothering and Inter/Generational Trauma (Demeter Press 2025). Her research and creative writing have appeared in About Place Journal, The New Quarterly, The Malpais Review, the anthology Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, and the volume Representations of Refugee, Migrant, and Displaced Motherhood in a Global Context. She is co-founder of The X Page: A Storytelling Workshop for Immigrant Women and has been a consulting and nonfiction editor with The New Quarterly. When she is not teaching, restoring antique furniture, or painting, she tries to work on her collection of short stories and her autoethnography (of sorts).

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has written four books, including most recently her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, (Palimpsest Press, 2026).  Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township

CAMILLA GIBB is the internationally acclaimed author of five novels: Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, and The Relatives. She is also the author of the RBC Taylor Prize–shortlisted memoir This Is Happy. Gibb has received the Trillium Book Award and the City of Toronto Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

MARIA GIESBRECHT is a writer living in Elmira, Ontario. She is the author of A Little Feral (2026), which won the Jack McCarthy Award. Maria is the winner of the 2025 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Narrative Poetry Prize, and a silver winner at the 2026 NMA Awards in Poetry. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry, Grain, The Literary Review of Canada, The New Quarterly, CV2, Queen’s Quarterly, and Canadian Literature.

LAURIE D. GRAHAM grew up in Treaty 6 Territory, outside of amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she now lives in Tkaronto/Toronto, Treaty 13 Territory, where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Award for Poetry. Calling It Back to Me was published in the spring with McClelland & Stewart.

KEVIN HARDCASTLE is a fiction writer from Simcoe County, Ontario. He is the author of the novel In the Cage and the short story collection Debris, which won the Trillium Book Award and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Hardcastle’s short fiction has been widely published in Canada and the United States, in journals such as The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Puritan, EVENT, and Shenandoah. His writing has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories 24 and 26, Best Canadian Stories 15, and Internazionale. He lives and works in Toronto.

HELEN HUMPHREYS is the author of many acclaimed and award-winning works including Followed by the Lark, The Ghost Orchard, Coventry, Machines Without Horses, Nocturne and Rabbit Foot Bill, which has been optioned for television. She has won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, a Lambda Literary Award for Fiction and the Toronto Book Award. She has also been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Trillium Book Award and CBC’s Canada Reads. Humphreys is the recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence and of the Writers’ Trust Matt Cohen Award in Celebration of a Writing Life. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.

LIZ JOHNSTON grew up in Revelstoke, B.C., and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Grain, The Antigonish Review, and The Cardiff Review. Johnston is an editor of Brick, A Literary Journal. The Fall-Down Effect is her debut novel.

BRIDGETTE KAM has been a literary agent at Westwood Creative Artists since 2019. Before working in publishing, she studied English literature at the University of Hong Kong and UCLA, got her M.A. at Durham University, and completed an internship at McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House. A lifelong desire to inspire people and culture led her to enriching jobs in the arts & entertainment, education, and legal industries.
 
She represents fiction and non-fiction for adults, and select works for young readers by existing clients and referrals only. Her fiction list focuses on high stakes upmarket and book club novels with big and unique hooks (a secret, a mystery, a critical event and its fallout) that ask timely questions, spark important conversations, and subvert expectations; historical fiction; and, as a lover of classics, retellings and reimaginings of global classics (no sci-fi or fantasy). For her non-fiction list, she represents narrative and practical non-fiction in the areas of business, food, health & wellness, history, personal growth/self-improvement, pop culture, religion/spirituality, science, sociology, and sports. Visit her full wishlist here.
 
When not reading manuscripts, she’s walking a spunky poodle, playing music with friends, looking for vintage gems and cozy coffee shops, and listening to too many audiobooks in Toronto.

Alysia Kolentsis is an Associate Professor of English at St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo. She is the author of Shakespeare’s Common Language (Bloomsbury) and co-editor of the forthcoming volume The Post-Pandemic University: Storying Possibilities (Routledge).

DORETTA LAU started watching horror movies at age nine and sketch comedy at eleven, which was probably why she ended up completing an MFA in Writing at Columbia University. She spent her days in New York working in children’s publishing and her nights watching musicians work out their inner demons. As a journalist in Hong Kong, she wrote about arts and culture for Artforum, Wall Street Journal Asia, and South China Morning Post. The Atlantic named her short story collection, How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?, as a best book of 2014. The title story was shortlisted for the 2013 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She is currently developing projects for film and television. We Are Underlings is her first novel. Visit dorettalau.com.

CARRIANNE LEUNG is a fiction writer and associate professor at the University of Guelph in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019, long listed for Canada Reads 2019 and awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019. Her most recent novel, Wonderland Road was published in April 2026 by Harper Collins Canada.

NADJA LUBIW-HAZARD (she/her) is a queer Toronto-based writer and the author of the novel The Nap-Away Motel and two children’s books. Nadja has worked as a veterinarian in private practice and at the Toronto Humane Society. She has volunteered in animal advocacy for many years, including with the Jane Goodall Institute. Nadja is a training creative writing facilitator and provides workshops with The Collaborative Learning College at CAMH (Centre for Mental Health and Addiction). 

A life-long animal-lover and long-time vegan, Lubiw-Hazard’s writing explores themes related to animals or what she refers to as the more-than-human world.

The term “more-than-human” designates different non-human entities co-dwelling on Earth, such as animals and plants. It acknowledges all forms of life as deeply interconnected and challenges the notion that non-human life is lesser. Nadja says, “I don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t in relationship with animals. I live with them and care for them, I have healed them and euthanized them, I advocate for them, I watch for them wherever I go, and I write them into being, again and again.” 

TANIS MACDONALD is the author of seven works of nonfiction and poetry, including Mobile, which was longlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. She is a two-time recipient of the Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards for Creative Nonfiction and has also won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Teaching Creative Writing. She is the co-editor of the anthology GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for our Times (with Ariel Gordon and Rosanna Deerchild). Originally from Treaty 1 territory/Winnipeg, she now lives near O:se Kenhionhata:tie (Willow River) in the southwestern Ontario watershed region.

SADIQA DE MEIJER’s most recent poetry collection is Qaf’s People, published by Signal Editions/ Véhicule Press in 2026. Past works include Leaving Howe Island (Governor General’s Award Finalist 2014) and The Outer Wards (Raymond Souster Award finalist 2020), and the memoir alfabet/alphabet (Governor General’s Award Winner 2021). Her work recurrently explores landscape, language, motherhood, inner lives, visual art, and the long wakes of colonialism and migration. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.

LARA EL MEKAUI is an editor, writer and researcher. Currently, she is the lead non-fiction editor at The New Quarterly and a Research Fellow at the Global Migration Institute. Her writing has been published in World Literature Today, The New Quarterly, Wasafiri, Event Magazine, Annahar English, Beirut Today, and Home Magazine. She also edited Nour Abou Fayad’s debut novel The Complete Opposite of Everything (2019), Nadia Tabbara’s debut book Harness Your Creativity (2018) and co-edited a poetry collection titled And We Chose Everything (2018).

RISHI MIDHA’s stories have been published in the literary magazines subTerrain and The New Quarterly, and have won or been finalists for contests including the LUSH Triumphant Literary Award and the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award. His story “We Are Busy Being Alive” was selected for Biblioasis Press’ Best Canadian Stories 2026. We Are Busy Being Alive is his debut collection of short stories. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

KAGISO LESEGO MOLOPE is an Indigenous novelist and playwright of the San people of Southern Africa. She is the author of four other novels: Dancing in the Dust, which was on the IBBY Honour List for 2006; The Mending Season; Such a Lonely, Lovely Road; and This Book Betrays My Brother. She has been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award four times. She is the winner of the 2014 Percy FitzPatrick Award, the 2019 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction, and the 2019 inaugural Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award. Across Southern Africa and in parts of Europe, her works are read in schools in several languages. She wrote the play Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising, which was staged for five years at Oslo’s Nordic Black Theatre. She lives on the unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.

PAMELA MULLOY is an award-winning author of two novels, The Deserters (Véhicule Press, 2018) and As Little As Nothing (ECW Press, 2022). Her creative nonfiction book, Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel (ECW), was published in April 2024. Her work has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, and the anthology Polished: Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction. She has lived in Poland, England, the United States and now lives in Ontario, where she is the Editor of The New Quarterly and Artistic Director of the Wild Writers Festival.

Vinh Nguyen is a writer and educator. He is the author of the speculative memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Award. He’s a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly.

JORDY ROSENBERG is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews and others. Jordy’s work has been supported by MacDowell, The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, and The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.

KASIA VAN SCHAIK’s first book, the linked story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth was nominated for the 2023 Giller Prize, the Concordia University First Book Prize, and the ReLit Prize for short fiction. She is the author of the forthcoming book of cultural criticism and memoir, Women Among Monuments, the poetry chapbook, Sea Burial Laws According to Country, and the co-editor of the essay collection, Shelter in Text: Essays on Dwelling and Refuge. Kasia’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, Room, The Rumpus, Maisonneuve Magazine, Geist, and the Best Canadian Poetry. She has been a finalist for the CBC short story prize and longlisted for the CBC nonfiction prize, and has served as a CBC QWF writer-in-residence. Kasia holds a PhD in literature from McGill University and is an assistant professor of English and the co-director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Wolastoqiyik territory. She edits fiction for The Fiddlehead. 

Susan Scott is a TNQ consulting editor and Wild Writers mentor working at the crossroads of story, spirit, self, and culture. Susan has taught in communities and classrooms throughout the States and Canada, including guest lectures at the Yale Institute for Sacred Music, and led award-winning initiatives in the environmental humanities and in culture work with First Nations, immigrants, and settlers. Literary works include Body & Soul, the TNQ-inspired edited collection that Sarah Selecky calls “a revelation.”

HEATHER SMITH is the author of books for young people, including Tig, a middle-grade novel which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature. Other notable books include The Agony of Bun O’Keefe which won the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award and Ebb and Flow which won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. The books in her body of work have either won or been shortlisted for virtually every Canadian children’s literature prize and been translated into eight languages.

Nicole Smith is a writer, theatre creator, director, and producer, who splits her time between her homes in Cambridge, Ontario and St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her work as a playwright has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Shaw Festival, Green Light Arts, and Canadian Stage. She is co-Artistic Director of Girl Power Inc. in St. John’s, and founding Artistic Producer of Sonderlust, a KW-based theatre collective dedicated to the creation of original work and the staging of  women’s stories. Her fiction has been published in a number of literary journals, and she is the 2021 first place recipient of the New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Award for her story Something Really Unbelievable. Nicole is currently at work on her first novel. She is also editorial assistant at TNQ and thrilled to get to discuss creativity at large with two of her favourite creators at this year’s Wild Writers Literary Festival. 

Claire Tacon is the author of In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo (Wolsak & Wynn), which was the 2019 Hamilton Reads selection. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Bronwen Wallace Award, the CBC Literary Prize and has appeared in various journals and anthologies. She produced the Parallel Careers podcast in partnership with The New Quarterly, and is a lecturer at St. Jerome’s University.

Sarah Tolmie is a poet and speculative fiction writer, Professor of English at UW. Her newest book is the near-future sci-fi Arboretum, due out in 2026.

Andrew Westoll is an award-winning journalist specializing in issues of science, travel, conservation, and culture. A former biologist and primatologist, he now writes regularly for many of Canada’s premier venues, such as The Walrus, Explore, Outpost and the Globe and Mail.

ASHRAF ZAGHAL is a Palestinian Canadian author who was born and raised in Jerusalem. He has published four poetry collections, and his work has been translated into English, French, and Hebrew. He is an editor of an online magazine focused on progressive literature and translation. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.