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 in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award and the Giller Prize. His third novel, Carnival, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into 30 languages.
Nadine Neema, born in Montreal and of Egyptian and Lebanese descent, is a multi-disciplinary artist and workshop facilitator. As a recording artist she has released four albums, was mentored by Leonard Cohen and has opened for Elton John, Joe Cocker and Cyndi Lauper. Neema began working with the Tłı̨chǫ, first as a community manager of Wekweètì, a small isolated Tłı̨chǫ community in the Northwest Territories, then assisting with their land claims and self-government negotiations under Chief Negotiator John B. Zoe. Neema has returned to Wekweètì periodically to conduct creativity workshops for the youth and photograph many of their events. Journal of a Traveling Girl is her first book.
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels The Angel of History, An Unnecessary Woman, The Hakawati, Koolaids and I, the Divine, as well as the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. An Unnecessary Woman was a National Book Award and National Book Critics’ Circle Award finalist. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.