Patrick DeWitt was born on Vancouver Island in 1975. He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: Undermajordomo Minor, Ablutions, and The Sisters Brothers, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Stephen Leacock Medal, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Patrick has been selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for his novel French Exit.

Raised in Alberta, Emma Hooper is a musician and writer. As a musician, her solo project “Waitress for the Bees” tours internationally and has earned her a Finnish Cultural Knighthood. Her debut novel, Etta and Otto and Russell and James, was an international bestseller and was published in 24 countries. She is a research-lecturer at Bath Spa University but comes home to Canada to cross-country ski as much as she can afford.

Emma has been selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for her novel, Our Homesick Songs.

Thea Lim’s writing has been published by the Paris Review, the Guardian, Salon, the National Post, LitHub, Electric Literature, the Millions, the Southampton Review and others. Her novella The Same Woman was released by Invisible Publishing in 2007. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston, and she grew up in Singapore and lives in Toronto, where she is a professor of creative writing. Thea has been selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for her novel, An Ocean of Minutes.

Esi Edugyan won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2011 for her novel Half-Blood Blues. The novel was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. She author lives in Victoria, BC.

Esi has been selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for his novel, Washington Black.

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of Full-Metal Indigiqueer and the winner of the Governor General’s History Award for the Indigenous Arts and Stories Challenge in 2016. Currently, he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the University of Calgary’s English department (Treaty 7). Jonny Appleseed is his first novel.

Born in 1970, Eric Dupont lives and works in Montreal. He has published 4 novels with Marchand de feuilles and in France with Éditions du Toucan and Éditions J’ai lu (Flammarion). He is a past winner of Radio-Canada’s “Combat des livres” (the equivalent of the CBC’s Canada Reads contest), a finalist for the Prix littéraire France-­Québec and the Prix des cinq continents, and a winner of the Prix des libraires and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. His fourth novel, Songs for the Cold of Heart (La fiancée américaine) translated by Peter McCambridge, has sold over 60,000 copies in Quebec alone.

Tanya Tagaq is an improvisational performer, avant-garde composer, and experimental recording artist who won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for her album Animism, a work that disrupted the music world in Canada and beyond with its powerfully original vision. Tanya’s most recent album Retribution was released in fall 2016. Split Tooth is her first novel.

Tanya has been selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for her novel, Split Tooth.

Sheila Heti is the author of seven books, including the novel How Should a Person Be? which was named a New York Times Notable Book; the story collection The Middle Stories; and the novel Ticknor. Her books have been translated into twelve languages, and her writing has been featured in various publications, including the New York Times, London Review of Books, the New Yorker, n+ 1, McSweeney’s, Harper’s and the Believer. She lives in Toronto. Sheila has been selected for the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist for her novel, Motherhood.

Paige Cooper was born and raised in the Rocky Mountains. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, West Branch, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast Online, Canadian Notes & Queries, The New Quarterly, Minola Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and have been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Montreal. Paige's story collection Zolitude is one of 12 books selected for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.

Lynn Coady was shortlisted in 2011 for her book, The Antagonist and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2013 for Hellgoing.