Check out the writers, storytellers and experts appearing at this year’s Festival.
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Here’s your reading list for this year’s Festival. Find your new favourite book here!
Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director, and author whose films have been selections at major festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and New York. He is the author of the crime novel Better the Blood and the nonfiction book In Dark Places, both of which won Ngaio Marsh awards, making him […]
Michael Redhill is a novelist, poet, and playwright. He’s the author of seven novels, four of which were written as Inger Ash Wolfe. His 2017 novel, Bellevue Square, won the Giller Prize. The Trial of Katterfelto is the second instalment of Modern Ghosts, a triptych of novels. Redhill lives and works in Toronto.
Natalie MacMaster began fiddling at the age of nine and released her debut album at the age of 16. Three decades, 16 albums, two Junos, and a Grammy nomination later, she has succeeded in bringing the music of her beloved homeland, Cape Breton Island, into the mainstream. She has toured with the Chieftains, Faith Hill, […]
Nathan Harris is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sweetness of Water, which was an Oprah’s Book Club pick, the winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Booker Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. He […]
Ryad Assani-Razaki was born in 1981 in Cotonou in the West African state of Benin. In 2009, his short story collection Deux cercles was awarded the Trillium Book Award. His debut novel La main d’Iman won the Prix Robert-Cliche in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction in 2012.
Samrat Upadhyay was born and raised in Nepal. He is author of the novels The City Son, The Guru of Love (a New York Times Notable Book), and Buddha’s Orphans, as well as the story collections Mad Country, The Royal Ghosts, and Arresting God in Kathmandu. His work has received the Whiting Award and the […]
Sibylle Grimbert‘s eleventh novel, Le Dernier des siens (2022) was a finalist for the Femina, Renaudot, Femina Lycéens, and Renaudot Lycéens prizes, and the Grand Prix de l’Académie française. The book has been translated into many languages, including English as The Last of Its Kind (tr. by Aleshia Jensen), and an animated film is forthcoming. […]
Susan Aglukark is a Juno Award–winning Inuk singer-songwriter. Born in Fort Churchill, Manitoba, but raised in Arviat, Nunavut, Susan now lives in Ontario. She is the first Inuk artist to win a Juno (four times) and a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime artistic achievement. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada, […]
Susan Choi‘s latest novel is Flashlight, which is currently long-listed for the Booker Prize. She is also the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, and the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for […]
New York Times, USA TODAY, and Globe and Mail bestselling author Susanna Kearsley is a former museum curator who loves restoring the lost voices of real people to the page, often in twin-stranded stories that interweave present and past. Her award-winning novels are published in translation in more than twenty-five countries. She lives near Toronto. […]
Terao Tetsuya graduated from National Taiwan University with degrees in Computer Science Information Engineering. He earned a master’s degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon and worked as an engineer at Google before turning to writing full-time. He published debut short story collection Spent Bullets and essay collection Overfitting. Spent Bullets won Taiwan Literature Awards’ […]
Zeina Sleiman is a Palestinian Canadian writer based out of Edmonton. In 2025, her short story, My Father’s Soil was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and she was listed among 22 Canadian writers to watch. She also has a PhD in Politics and works in the post-secondary sector. Where the Jasmine Blooms is […]
Ziyad Saadi is a Palestinian Canadian writer and filmmaker based in Vancouver. He is a Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist and winner of the MPAC Hollywood Bureau pilot writing competition. He has contributed to Indiewire, The Independent, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, and his short story “The Third or Fourth Casualty” is featured in the Palestinian […]
Karen Bartlett is a writer and journalist, contributing to The Times, WIRED, Newsweek, TIME and the BBC. Karen was formerly the director of a leading campaign group for democracy and human rights, and is the author of five other non-fiction books including The Health of Nations, The Diary That Changed The World: The Remarkable Story […]
Patrick Tarr is an award-winning film and television writer whose work has been seen around the globe. Originally from Vancouver, he lives in Toronto with his family.
Patchen Barss is a Toronto-based science journalist who has contributed to the BBC, Nautilus magazine, Scientific American, and the Discovery Channel (Canada), as well as to many science and natural history museums. His previous books include The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication, From Gutenberg to Google, and Flow Spin Grow: Looking for […]
Lin King is a writer and translator based in Taipei and New York. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, and Joyland, among others, and has received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Translations from Mandarin and Japanese into English include The Boy from Clearwater by Yu Pei-Yun and […]
Kōtarō Isaka is the internationally-acclaimed Japanese author of Bullet Train (Japanese title Maria Beetle, 2010). One of the most consistently bestselling authors of contemporary Japanese fiction, Isaka is known for works that straddle the literary and entertainment genres. His novels include Audubon’s Prayer (2000, Shincho Mystery Club Award), Lush Life (2002), Three Assassins (Japanese title […]
Kiran Desai is the bestselling author of two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in India, she came to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City.
Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Oxford Soju Club is his first novel.
Jemimah Wei is the author of The Original Daughter, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, and an IndieNext pick. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Honouree, William Van Dyke Short Story Prize winner, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Felipe P. […]
