GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE is an internationally-renowned poet and scholar whose books—including his highly-esteemed poetry collections Execution Poems and Whylah Falls—have won him many honours, including the Portia White Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship Prize. 

ELIZABETH HAY is the author of the #1 nationally bestselling novel Alone in the Classroom, the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novel Late Nights On Air, as well as four other highly acclaimed works of fiction, His Whole Life, A Student of Weather, Garbo Laughs, and Small Change. All Things Consoled, her first book of nonfiction, is shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize and the winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

KATHY PAGE is the author of ten previous books, most recently Dear Evelyn, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada's Fiction Prize. Other works include Paradise & Elsewhere and The Two of Us, both nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

MICHAEL CRUMMEY is a poet, storyteller, and author of several critically acclaimed novels. River Thieves was a finalist for the 2001 Scotiabank Giller Prize and The Wreckage, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Galore won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His latest novel, Sweetland, was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. 

AMANDA LEDUC is a disabled author with cerebral palsy whose work has been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize, the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, the Malahat Review’s Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the Thomas Morton Fiction Prize. Amanda serves as the Communications and Development Coordinator for The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD),Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories.

DAVID BEZMOZGIS is the author of Natasha and Other Stories, The Free World, and The Betrayers. He has been twice nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award, and his debut story collection, Natasha and Other Stories, won the Toronto Book Award and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for First Book, and Immigrant City: Stories was nominated for the Toronto Book Award. 

CASEY PLETT is the author of Little Fish and A Safe Girl to Love. She is the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers and wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. 

SARAH TOLMIE is a medievalist trained at the University of Toronto and Cambridge and is associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her poetry collection, The Art of Dying was shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize and her 120-sonnet sequence Trio was shortlisted for the 2016 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. 

VINH NGUYEN is Assistant Professor of English at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. He specializes in refugee, immigrant, and diasporic literature and culture. He held a SSHRC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, a Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction, and a Harry Lyman Hooker Fellowship, among other honours. He is the 2017 recipient of the John C. Polanyi Prize in Literature. 

KATHY FRIEDMAN was finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches creative writing in the University of Guelph’s Open Education program and is the artistic director of InkWell Workshops, which runs free creative writing workshops for adults with mental health and addictions issues. 

CAROLINA ECHEVERRIA is a visual artist, a CBC commentator, the founder and artistic director of Native-Immigrant arts collective, and the Artistic Director of Métèque gallery and art hub in Montreal. An excerpt from her memoir appears in Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers, and her artwork adorns the cover.

LAMEES AL ETHARI immigrated to Canada with her husband and two boys in 2008. 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 collection of poems titled From the Wounded Banks of the Tigris was published in 2018 and her memoir on the American invasion of Iraq, Waiting for the Rain, was published in 2019. 

EUFEMIA FANTETTI’S debut, A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love, was runner-up for the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and winner of the 2014 Bressani Literary Prize. A graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA in Creative Writing, she is a three-time winner of Accenti Magazine’s annual competition.

HAZEL MILLAR is the Co-publisher at Book*hug, an award-winning independent literary press based in Toronto. An avid reader, Hazel is rarely without a book. She is the current Chair of the Board of the Literary Press Group of Canada, and she also sits on several other publishing advisory boards and committees.

HEIDI REIMER’S short stories and essays have appeared in Chatelaine, The New Quarterly, Little Fiction, Literary Mama, Stealing Time, and Hip Mama, and in the anthologies Outcrops: Northeastern Ontario Short Stories, The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood, and Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers. 

SUSAN SCOTT is the editor of Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers and the author of Temple in a Teapot. She serves as The New Quarterly’s lead nonfiction editor, retreat director, associate director of the Wild Writers Festival, and on the board of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. Her next book, Sainted Dirt, is a reckoning with land, language, family, and imperfect teaware.

HELEN KNOTT was one of sixteen global change makers featured by the Nobel Women’s Initiative for being committed to end gender-based violence. Helen was selected as a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author. The memoir, In My Own Moccasins, is her first book.

NADJA LUBIW-HAZARD is a writer and a veterinarian. Her short fiction has been published in Room, Understorey, The Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly and more; her first novel, The Nap-Away Motel, was published in May 2019.  

STUART ROSS is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and publisher. He sold his chapbooks on the streets of Toronto in the 1980s, and is now the prize-winning author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including Motel of the Opposable Thumbs, A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent, and Pockets. His novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew won the Mona Elaine Adilman Prize for Jewish Fiction.

NOELLE ALLEN is the publisher of Wolsak and Wynn literary press based in Hamilton, Ontario. She has been the chair of gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival and of the Literary Press Group, a national publishing organization. 

MARILYN BIDERMAN entered the Transatlantic Agency after working at her own literary agency and consultancy practice, where she helped launch the careers of début and prize-winning authors. She has worked at McClelland & Stewart as VP, Director, Rights and Contracts, and handled the international rights for authors including Leonard Cohen, Alistair MacLeod, and Madeleine Thien.

FRANCINE CUNNINGHAM is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist and educator. She is a recent winner of The Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. Her fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon’s Prose shortlist, Joyland Magazine, The Puritan Magazine and more. Her debut book of poetry is titled ON/Me (Caitlin Press). 

PAMELA MORDECAI writes stories and poems for adults and children. A former language arts teacher with a PhD in English, she has authored/co-authored numerous textbooks and edited/co-edited groundbreaking anthologies of Caribbean writing, especially the writing of women. She has published six books of poetry. Her debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for the 2015 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award.

JESSICA WESTHEAD’s fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, selected for the Journey Prize anthology, and nominated for a National Magazine Award. . She is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections Things Not to Do and And Also Sharks, which was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, a Kobo’s Best eBook of the Year and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. 

PHILIP HUYNH was born in Vancouver to parents who had fled Vietnam during the civil war. He is the winner of the Open Season Award from the Malahat Review, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Emerging Writers Award. His collection of short stories, The Forbidden Purple City, was published in March 2019.

LEANNE TOSHIKO SIMPSON is a Japanese-Canadian writer from Scarborough. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 17, she writes about navigating the mental health system, and was featured as an ambassador for Bell Let's Talk. This year, she was longlisted for the Journey Prize. Leanne  teaches creative writing at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and InkWell Workshops.

MICHELLE PARISE is an award-winning journalist, writer and performer.  In 2017, she adapted her unpublished memoir, Alone: A Love Story, into an international hit podcast for CBC. In May 2020, the book that became a podcast will be a book again, published by Dundurn Press.

SHENIZ JANMOHAMED (MFA) is a poet, educator and land artist who has performed her work in venues across the world, including the Jaipur Literature Festival, Alliance Française de Nairobi and the Aga Khan Museum. Sheniz is also the author of two poetry collections: Bleeding Light (Mawenzi House, 2010) and Firesmoke (Mawenzi House, 2014) and is currently working on her third collection of ghazals. 

MAYA AMEYAW was born and raised in Toronto by a family of poets and visual artists. Her poetry and short stories have also appeared in two community arts anthologies, A Place For Us (2016) and The Double World (2017), which she helped to compile and curate with grants the Toronto Arts Council. She is currently working on her first novel. Maya is the peer support worker for InkWell Workshops.