Tessa McWatt was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and grew up in Toronto. She currently lives in London, England, where she is working as a producer and scriptwriter.
Rabindranath Maharaj, a Trinidadian teacher and journalist, wrote several of the stories in the Interloper during the year he spent in Fredericton. He now writes and teaches in Toronto.
Dionne Brand's literary credentials are legion. Her most recent book of poetry, Ossuaries, won the Griffin Poetry Prize; her nine others include winners of the Governor General's Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her novel In Another Place, Not Here was selected as a NYT Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book by the Globe and Mail; At the Full and Change of the Moon was selected a Best Book by the LA Times and What We All Long For won the Toronto Book Award. In 2006, Brand was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing, and was Toronto's Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. In 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. Brand is a Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.
Margaret Atwood is the internationally renowned author of such novels as Oryx and Crake, Alias Grace, and The Edible Woman. She is a novelist and a poet, and has also authored short story collections, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts, and books.
Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist and memoirist. His best-known work, The Book of Negroes, won multiple awards, including the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, Daydreams of Angels, and The Lonely Hearts Hotel, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has won CBC Canada Reads, The Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. She lives in Montreal.
Eden Robinson is the internationally acclaimed author of Traplines, Monkey Beach, and Blood Sports. Traplines was the winner of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Britain's Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Monkey Beach was nominated for the Giller Prize, the 2000 Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was selected as the Globe and Mail's Editor's Choice. Robinson is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.
LEE MARACLE was the author of a number of critically acclaimed works, including Ravensong; Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel; Daughters Are Forever; Celia';s Song; I Am Woman; First Wives Club; Talking to the Diaspora, Memory Serves: Oratories; and My Conversations with Canadians, which was a finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Award and the First Nation Communities READ Award. Hope Matters, a poetry collection co-authored with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter, was published in 2019. Maracle was also the co-editor of My Home as I Remember and served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington. Maracle received the J.T. Stewart Award, the Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Blue Metropolis Festival First Peoples Prize, the Harbourfront Festival Prize, and the Anne Green Award. Maracle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University, was a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, and was an Officer of the Order of Canada. In July 2019, she was announced as a finalist of the prestigious Neustadt Prize, popularly known as the American Nobel. A member of the Sto:lo Nation, Maracle passed away on November 11, 2021, in Surrey, British Columbia. She was 71.
Rita Wong is a writer, teacher, and waterkeeper. She is the author of three books of poetry and the co-author of several collaborative works, most recently, beholden: a poem as long as the river (2018), with the poet Fred Wah. With Dorothy Christian (Secwepemc and Syilx Nations), Wong edited downstream: reimagining water (WLU Press, 2017). She is an associate professor of Critical + Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she teaches classes in the humanities and creative writing.
Hiromi Goto is the author of the story collection Hopeful Monsters (Arsenal Pulp Press) as well as the novels The Kappa Child and Chorus of Mushrooms, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Book (Canada-Caribbean) and co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award, and the children's book The Water of Possibility, a selection of the Canadian Children's Book Centre. Her most recent novel is a YA fantasy, Half World and she's co-written a book of poetry with David Bateman entitled Wait Until Late Afternoon. She is the 2009/10 writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, at the beginning of the 1960s, George Elliott Clarke is a seventh-generation Africadian. He has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry and prose, including Whylah Falls and Execution Poems, an acclaimed novel George & Rue, and the celebrated opera, Beatrice Chancy. His many awards include the Governor General's Award for poetry and the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.
Judith Thompson is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for White Biting Dog and The Other Side of the Dark. In 2006 she was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada and in 2008 she was awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play Palace of the End. Judith is a professor of drama at the University of Guelph and lives with her husband and five children in Toronto.
David Chariandy lives in Vancouver and teaches in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. His novel Soucouyant has received great attention, including a Governor General's Literary Award nomination for Fiction, a Gold Independent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. His most recent novel, Brother, won the 2017 Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Prize for Fiction.
Richard Van Camp (he/him/his) is a proud member of the Tłı̨chǫ Nation from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He is the author of more than 25 books including The Lesser Blessed (also a feature film), the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel A Blanket of Butterflies (with Scott B. Henderson), and Three Feathers (also a feature film). He is a contributor to the groundbreaking graphic novel anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold. Richard is also the author of five collections of short stories, including Night Moves, and six baby books, including the award-winning Little You (with Julie Flett).
Stephen Henighan is the author of six novels, four collections of short stories, and six books of essays, criticism, or reportage. His work has been published in Ploughshares, The Malahat Review, The Globe and Mail, The Times Literary Supplement, Geist magazine, and The Walrus, among others. He has translated novels into English from Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian and is General Editor, Biblioasis International Translation Series. He is currently a professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at the University of Guelph.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, and musician, and a member of Alderville First Nation in Ontario. She is the author of six previous books. Her newest novel is Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies and her latest album is Theory of Ice. Simpson is on the faculty at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning.
