Ali Hassan is an actor, author, broadcaster, and comedian who has performed for audiences across Canada, the United States and internationally. He is the host of the CBC Radio hit stand-up comedy show Laugh Out Loud. For the past nine years he has been the host of Canada Reads, CBC’s nationally broadcast “Battle of the […]
Read more »
Stephen Marche is a novelist and culture writer who has written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Esquire, and pretty much everywhere else. His books include three novels, The Hunger of the Wolf, Raymond and Hannah, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as […]
Iain Reid is the author of four previous books, including his New York Times bestselling debut novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed the film adaptation for Netflix. His second novel, Foe, is being adapted for film, starring Saoirse Ronan, […]
Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian producer for film and television, a published author, public speaker, journalist, and former broadcaster. She is the author of the memoir Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, which was shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also created […]
Martha Wainwright is an internationally renowned singer-songwriter, with over two decades of industry experience. Critically-acclaimed for the rawness and emotional honesty of both her vocals and lyrics, her albums include: Martha Wainwright (2005); I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too (2008); Come Home to Mama (2012); the JUNO-nominated Songs in the Dark (2015), […]
J.M. Miro is the author of the international bestseller Ordinary Monsters. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest, and also writes under the name Steven Price.
Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, TV, film, and fashion. She is a Canadian Screen Award winner and a Polaris Music Prize nominee, and her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel.” She is also […]
A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of […]
Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent bestselling novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads. Her previous work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and […]
Debra Thompson is an associate professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is an internationally recognized, award-winning scholar of the politics of race and holds a Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies. She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, […]
Kim Fu is the author of the story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, long-listed for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel, For Today I Am a Boy, won the Edmund White Award Award for Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Emerging Writer Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the […]
Elise Levine is the author of the story collection This Wicked Tongue, the novels Blue Field and Requests and Dedications, and the story collection Driving Men Mad. Her work has also appeared in publications including Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Gettysburg Review and Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches in the MA […]
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world […]
Miguel Syjuco is a Filipino writer, civil society advocate, and professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. His debut novel, Ilustrado, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Awards Grand Prize, his country’s top literary honor. He has worked as a contributing […]
Cody Caetano is a writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, where he wrote this memoir under the mentorship of Lee Maracle. Excerpts of Half-Bads in White Regalia earned him a 2020 Indigenous Voices Award for […]
Tajja Isen is a writer, editor and voice actor. Her essays and criticism have appeared in dozens of outlets across the US and Canada. She is the editor in chief of Catapult magazine, the former digital editor of The Walrus and has also edited for Electric Literature. She is the coeditor of the essay anthology […]
Didier Leclair (Didier Kabagema) was born in Montreal to Rwandan parents. He grew up in Africa—Gabon, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast and Congo-Brazzaville—and returned to Canada in 1987. Since then, he has been living and writing in Toronto. In 2000, his novel Toronto, I Love You won the Prix Trillium, and he has also been a […]
Anthony Morgan is an entrepreneur, game designer, PhD researcher. He’s the former host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet and one of the current hosts of CBC’s The Nature of Things. He’s spent close to 20 years working across multiple disciplines in science communication including live engagements at the Ontario Science Center, web series production for […]
Valerie Blackmore is the President and CEO of Wyndham Forensic Group, a private forensic biology and DNA testing laboratory in Guelph, Ontario. Valerie’s career as a forensic biologist began in 1994 at the Government of Ontario’s Centre of Forensic Sciences following improvements to the justice system after the Paul Bernardo murders. In 2009, Valerie founded […]
David Demchuk has been writing for print, stage, digital and other media for nearly 40 years. His debut horror novel The Bone Mother, published in 2017, was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Toronto Book Award, the Kobzar Book Award and a Shirley Jackson Award in the Best Novel […]
As a Senior Programmer at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Steve Gravestock is responsible for the organization’s Canadian programming initiatives, including Canada’s Top Ten film selection and the year-round See The North programme, which offers a free showcase of homegrown classics. As a programmer for TIFF, Gravestock has selected Canadian feature films since 2004 and […]
Born in Montreal, Neil Besner grew up in Rio de Janeiro, has taught and travelled widely in Brazil, and is fluent in Portuguese. He taught Canadian literature at the University of Winnipeg for thirty years. He has written and edited books on Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro and Carol Shields, as well as numerous articles. His […]
Shelagh Rogers is a veteran broadcast-journalist at CBC Radio, currently the host and a producer of The Next Chapter, the award-winning program devoted to writing in Canada. In 2011, she was inducted as an Honorary Witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Also that year, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. […]
Liam Hendrikse was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and raised in the Toronto area. He graduated from McMaster University in 1995, and King’s College University of London in 1998. He was a British Home Office Forensic Scientist from 1998 until 2006, where he specialized in firearms and ballistics. He now resides in Hamilton, acting as a […]
