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Gord Grisenthwaite

Gord Grisenthwaite’s stories and poems have appeared in ndncountry, Offset17, The Antigonish Review, ELQ and PRISM International, among others. Some of them have earned prizes and awards, including the 2014 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award and the 2007 PRISM International short story prize. His first novel, Home Waltz, is with Palimpsest Press. His short stories are in Exile’s Bawaajigan anthology and the forthcoming Food of My People.

Gord is from Lytton, B.C. is a member of the Lytton First Nation, resides in Kingsville, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Windsor with an M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing in the spring 2020.

Karen Lee White

Karen Lee White’s work has appeared in Exile’s That Dammed Beaver: Canadian Humour; Laughs and Gaffs anthology; the collection of Indigenous writers Impact, Colonialism in Canada, and literary journals.

White holds the torch brightly as a new and powerful voice, her style and sensibility encompassing the traditional and the contemporary. In The Silence, with the Yukon as a canvas, she engages in a deep empathy for characters, emergent Indigenous identity, and discovery that employs dreams, spirits, songs, and journals as foundations for dialogue between cultures.

Brian Van Norman

With past awards for play writing and short stories, Brian Van Norman is the author of three previous novels: The Betrayal Path (Amazon) and Immortal Water (Guernica Editions) and Against the Machine: Luddites (Guernica Editions). “No book could be more timely. As concern grows daily about the impact of technology on the planet … Jane Austen meets Quentin Tarantino.” review by Alan Brooke.

He is currently at work writing a sequel to Luddites titled Against the Machine: Manifesto. That novel will launch this autumn.

Once a teacher, theatre director and adjudicator, Brian Van Norman left those worlds to travel with his wife, Susan, and take up writing as a full time pursuit. He has journeyed to every continent and sailed nearly every sea on the planet. His base is Waterloo, Ontario, Canada though he is seldom found there.

Anna Dowdall

Anna Dowdall‘s first and second mysteries, After the Winter and The Au Pair, have received praise for their evocative Canadian settings and unsettling denouements. Her work has made the long list for the Crime Writers of Canada new novel and US Katherine Paterson prizes.  She reads obscure fiction in English and French and thinks Quebec is an under recognized mise en scène for domestic suspense.  In April on Paris Street (Guernica, October 2021) murder meets carnivalesque play, against the background of Montreal’s mean streets and the Carnaval de Paris.

Anna was born in Montreal, but has lived all over North America, including the far North. She has worked as a nurse’s aide, translator of pulp fiction, journalist, university teacher, urban shepherd, and the list goes on. 

Katie Zdybel

Equipoise is Katie Zdybel‘s first collection of stories, and was produced with the assistance of a Canada Council for the Arts grant. The Critics and Honey Maiden (from this collection) will appear in both Exile’s CVC9 Anthology and EXILE Quarterly, and other stories have been published in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Journal, and (forthcoming) The Malahat Review.

She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and is also a graduate of the Humber College Creative Writing by Correspondence program. Katie resides in the Blue Mountains region of Ontario.

Kate Heartfield

Kate Heartfield writes science fiction and fantasy, including the Aurora-winning novel Armed in Her Fashion and the Nebula-shortlisted novella Alice Payne Arrives, along with dozens of stories. She is the author of The Road to Canterbury and The Magician’s Workshop, both of which were shortlisted for the Nebula in game writing. Her next novel is The Embroidered Book, a historical fantasy coming in 2022. A former journalist, Kate lives in Ottawa, Canada.

H. Nigel Thomas

Recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2020), H[ubert] Nigel Thomas grew up in St Vincent and the Grenadines but moved to Montreal in 1968. He is the author of 11 books and dozens of essays. His novels Spirits in the Dark and No Safeguards were shortlisted for the Quebec Writers Federation Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize. Des vies Cassées (the translation of Lives: Whole and Otherwise) was shortlisted for le Prix Carbet des Lycéens. He holds the 2000 Professional of the Year Jackie Robinson Award, the 2013 Université Laval’s Hommage aux créateurs, and the 2020 Black Theatre Workshop’s Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. The Canadian High Commission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States deems him to be one of Canada’s outstanding immigrants from St Vincent and the Grenadines. His books Behind the Face of Winter and Lives: Whole and Otherwise have been translated into French.

In 1988 he began a career as assistant professor of U.S. literature at Université Laval and held the rank of Professeur titulaire when I retired in 2006 to devote himself to writing full-time.

David Kingston Yeh

David Kingston Yeh holds his MA in cultural sociology from Queen’s University, is an alumnus of George Brown Theatre School, and attended Advanced Post Graduate Studies in Expressive Arts in Saas Fee, Switzerland. He works as a counsellor and educator in downtown Toronto, Canada. David resides up the street from a circus academy, along with his husband and a family of racoons. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines. He has published two novels: A Boy at the Edge of the World (2018) and Tales From the Bottom of My Sole (2020). He has been listed among “writers to watch” by CBC Books. He will be completing his third novel, The B-Side of Daniel Garneau, in 2021.

Emma Pivato

Emma Pivato’s mystery novels in the Claire Burke series is an extension of her advocacy work promoting the inclusion of people with severe disabilities into normal society. In this series, the man character, an interior decorator discovers a dead body, and that her severely disabled, wheelchair-bound daughter Jessie forms a bond with the victim’s husband Jimmy, the main suspect.

Shortly before she retired from her professional work as an academic and psychologist (a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology, an M.A, in Philosophy, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology) in 2015, she published her first mystery novel and has been writing ever since.

And Along Came Alexis is available in October. Click here to pre-order.

Trevor Ferguson

Trevor Ferguson is the author of sixteen novels and four plays. The latter have been produced in both Montreal and New York. The film of his novel, The Timekeeper, was released in 2009. His thrillers, under the name John Farrow, have received extraordinary acclaim around the world, and are published in twenty-four countries. His most recent novel is Lady Jail (John Farrow, 2021, Severn House/ Canongate, U.K.) He lives in Victoria, BC.

Jessica Hamilton

Jessica Hamilton was born in Australia but grew up in Canada. She has lived and worked in the Czech Republic, Taiwan, India and Japan. She studied writing at the Humber School for Writers as well as George Brown College. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband, son and daughter. What You Never Knew is her first novel.

Judy Penz Sheluk

A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the author of two mystery series: the Glass Dolphin Mysteries and the Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including The Best Laid Plans and Heartbreaks & Half-truths, which she also edited.

She splits her time between Alliston and Goulais River, Ontario, with her husband, Mike, and their golden retriever, Gibbs.

Find more about her here.

Rosanna Battigelli

As a teenager, Rosanna Battigelli loved reading historical, suspense, and romance novels, and dreamed of writing for Harlequin one day. She is thrilled that her early dream has come true, with two Harlequin Romances published in 2018 and one in 2020, and two more that will be released in March and July of 2021. Rosanna’s first romance, Swept Away by the Enigmatic Tycoon, is set Parry Sound and Georgian Bay, places she loves to visit. Captivated by Her Italian Boss takes place in Calabria, Italy, where Rosanna was born. Her third book, Caribbean Escape with the Tycoon, is set in the Caribbean and was written after going on a cruise. Rescued by the Guarded Tycoon features the hero’s cousin from the first book and takes place again in Parry Sound with scenes in Toronto. Rescued . . . will be released in March 2021. Rosanna’s fifth book, Falling for the Sardinian Tycoon, is set on a private island off the coast of Sardinia. It will be released in July 2021. The books are available at amazon and Chapters

MJ Moores

MJ Moores is a hybrid author who has traditionally e-published 2 non-fiction industry guides and 1 marketing guide. She has completed her self-published Sci-Fi/Fantasy series The Chronicles of Xannia, and now plays in the sandboxs of Romantic Suspense, Steampunk Superheros, and lite Urban Fantasy. Her writing articles have appeared in Authors Publish Magazine, Indyfest Magazine, Easy Writer, and in the Writers Guide: The Writing Spiral published by Sunshine in a Jar Press. MJ taught high school English, was a genre writing coach, freelance writer, and is currently an acquisitions editor for DAOwen Publications. She loves nothing more than helping writers through this crazy journey.

Learn more about here here: http://mjmoores.com

Tracey Richardson

Tracey Richardson is an Essex County girl and University of Windsor graduate who has called Owen Sound, Ont., home for the last 30 years. A now-retired daily newspaper journalist, Tracey is the author of 13 romance novels published by Bella Books. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Awards finalist as well as a first-place Rainbow Romance winner (Romance Writers of America) for contemporary romance. She is also a Word By Word (short story) second-place recipient and a finalist numerous times for the Golden Crown Literary Society. Tracey is a founding member of the Ascribe Writers group in Grey-Bruce. In her spare time, Tracey enjoys spending time with her wife and dogs as well as activities such as hockey, golf and other outdoor pursuits. And reading. Always reading!

Visit her website at www.traceyrichardson.net

Sherry Coman

Sherry Coman is a writer, educator and story editor with more than thirty years experience in theatre and film as the author of her own plays, screenplays and fiction and as the consultant on story editing and film production for clients ranging from young new filmmakers, to emerging playwrights and established international film producers. As a playwright, she has been produced in Canada, the US and Great Britain and in 1991 was nominated for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn prize.

James Dewar

James Dewar teaches fiction and poetry workshops in Canada and internationally. His short fiction and poetry have been published in several anthologies and literary journals. He edits poetry and prose in a mentorship capacity and enjoys his role as the publisher of Piquant Press. He is currently working on a novel and a new collection of poetry.

James has performed his work live on CBC Radio, on several university radio stations, particularly the HOWL Radio show on CIUT 89.5 FM in Toronto.

He has been producing and hosting the Hot-Sauced Words Poetry Performance Series in Toronto since 2006.

Susan (Deepam) Wadds

Winner of The Writers’ Union of Canada’s 2016 short prose contest, Susan Wadds’ short fiction and poetry have been featured in literary journals and anthologies, including Room and carte blanche magazines. The first two chapters of her novel, “What the Living Do,” won Lazuli Literary Group’s writing contest, and was published in Azure’s winter 2017 issue.

A graduate of the Humber School for Writers, Susan is certified in the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method of writing workshop facilitation. She leads writing workshops and retreats virtually, in Canada, and internationally.