André Alexis is an author of novels, short stories, and plays. His 2015 novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the Giller Prize, Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. He is also the author of Days by Moonlight, which won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize, The Hidden Keys, Pastoral, Asylum, and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. Alexis lives in Toronto.

Joanna is a a CBC Literary Awards prizewinner who has been published in national and international journals and magazines such as Room, The Fiddlehead, En Route, and International Human Rights Arts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022.

Fanny Britt is a playwright, writer, and translator. She is the winner of multiple Governor General’s Literary Awards, a Libris Award, a Joe Shuster Award, and was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature. Faires les sucres won the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-language Fiction in 2021. Britt has written a dozen plays and translated more than fifteen works by many American, Canadian, British, and Irish playwrights. Born in Northern Quebec, Britt lives in Montreal.

Mona Awad is the bestselling author of the novels Rouge, All’s Well, Bunny, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. She is a three-time finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award, the recipient of an Amazon Best First Novel Award, and she was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Bunny was a finalist for a New England Book Award and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. Rouge is being adapted for film by Fremantle and Sinestra. Margaret Atwood named Awad her literary heir in The New York Times’s T Magazine. She teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston.

Eddy has been a finalist for the Edmund White Award, the ReLit Best Novel Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award for his novels After Elias and The Rebellious Tide. He was named a Rising Star by Writers’ Trust of Canada in 2021. His short stories can be found in Joyland, Yolk, and various literary journals and anthologies. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut is his third novel. He lives in Vancouver with his husband.

Kirti Bhadresa's fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The Fiddlehead, PrairieFire, The Quarantine Review, The Sprawl, and Room, and she has been a finalist for the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Award in the category of Feature Writing. Bhadresa lives with her family in Calgary, AB, on Treaty 7 territory.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Granta. Pick a Colour is her first novel.

Ian is the award-winning author of seven acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His debut novel, Reproduction, won the 2019 Giller Prize. His first work of nonfiction, Disorientation: Being Black in the World, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction, as well as a CBC and Boston Globe best book of the year. In 2024, Williams delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, which became the bestselling book What I Mean to Say, on rehabilitating conversation in divisive times. A trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Williams is a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto.

Otoniya J. Okot Bitek writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Otoniya was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story “Going Home” received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize. We, the Kindling is her first novel.

Emma (she/her) is an author, journalist and entrepreneur. She has an MA in Journalism and an MSc. in International Development from Sciences Po in Paris. Emma’s writing about books, maternal health and more has appeared in Literary Hub, Vogue, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The New York Times. She is the creator and co-host of the culture podcast Fanfare. In 2014, Emma co-founded a now multi-award-winning organic beverage company called Greenhouse, where she is Head of Brand. She is the author of two bestselling cookbooks, How to Eat with One Hand (2021) and The Greenhouse Cookbook (2017). Emma lives in Toronto with her family. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is her first novel.