Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Invisible Dead (“the definitive Vancouver crime novel”), Cut You Down (“successfully brings Raymond Chandler into the 21st century”), Hell and Gone (“the best crime writer in Canada”) and Sunset and Jericho (“Terminal City’s grittiest, most intelligent, most sensitively observed contemporary detective series”).
Wiebe’s work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award and the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus, and City of Vancouver book prizes.
Sharon Anne Cook is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of Ottawa. She is the author and editor of 12 books on Canadian women’s history. The recipient of many teaching awards, she teaches graduate courses in the history of education. She lives in Ottawa.
Elyse Friedman is a critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright. Her work has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Toronto Book Award, the ReLit Award and the Tom Hendry Award. Her short story The Soother won the gold National Magazine Award for Fiction, and her poetry book Know Your Monkey won a ForeWord Book of the Year award. Her screenplay Better Now won the TIFF-CBC Films Screenwriter Award Jury Prize in 2019; her screenplay The Relationship Experiment won the TIFF-CBC Films Screenwriter Award in 2020. Elyse Friedman lives in Toronto.
Margaret Carson is the eldest of two children who survived the Castleton massacre. A retired college instructor, she is accomplished in creating and adapting workplace programs as well as classroom delivery. She lives in Mississippi Mills, Ontario.
Steve Ryan began his career with the Toronto Police at the age of 18. After nearly 30 years of policing — most of which he spent working as a detective — Ryan retired and began a career with CP24 as a crime specialist. He lives in Toronto.
Jonathan Garfinkel is an award-winning author. His plays include Cockroach, House of Many Tongues and The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret. He has published the poetry collection Glass Psalms, chapbook Bociany and memoir Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide. His non-fiction has appeared in the Walrus, Tablet, the Globe and Mail, PEN International and more. Named by the Toronto Star as “one to watch,” Garfinkel is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, where he is writing a memoir about life with type 1 diabetes, and the revolutionary open-source Loop artificial pancreas system. He lives in Berlin and Toronto.
Perry Chafe is a Canadian television writer, showrunner, producer and songwriter. He is a co-founder and partner in Take the Shot Productions. Perry was the co-creator, showrunner and head writer for the TV series Republic of Doyle (CBC), and an executive producer and writer for Frontier (Netflix/Discovery), starring Jason Momoa. In addition, he was an executive producer and writer for Caught (CBC). He is currently a writer and producer on the hugely successful Son of a Critch (CBC). Born and raised in the small fishing community of Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, he now lives in St. John’s. @PerryChafe
Scott Thornley grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, which inspired his fictional Dundurn. He is the author of five novels in the critically acclaimed MacNeice Mysteries series: Erasing Memory, The Ambitious City, Raw Bone, Vantage Point and Middlemen. He was appointed to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 1990. In 2018, he was named a Member of the Order of Canada. Thornley divides his time between Toronto and the southwest of France.
Susan Goldenberg is the author of 10 books and the winner of a Canadian Authors Award. She has written for Canadian and American newspapers and currently pens articles for Canada’s History magazine. She lives in Toronto.
Catherine Fogarty is the founder and president of Big Coat Media, as well as the writer, producer and voice of the narrative true-crime podcast Story Hunter. In 2021, Fogarty published her first non-fiction book, Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, which won the Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and was shortlisted for the Speaker’s Book Award and the Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book. Originally trained as a social worker, Fogarty holds a BA in sociology/anthropology, an MA in social work, an MA in social work, an MBA in human resource management and an MFA in creative non-fiction writing.