Jasmine Sealy is a Barbadian-Canadian writer based in Vancouver, BC. Her work has been published in The New Quarterly, Adda Stories, Cosmonauts Avenue, GEIST, Room Magazine and Prairie Fire. She is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing from UBC and is the former Prose Editor at PRISM international. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for several prizes including Prairie Fire’s annual fiction contest, the CBC Short Story Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2020 she won the UBC/HarperCollins Fiction Prize for The Island of Forgetting.
Dr. Brian Goldman is an ER doctor and a bestselling author and has hosted the CBC Radio show and podcast, White Coat, Black Art for over a decade. He is also the host of a new CBC podcast about personal health, The Dose, and is a sought-after speaker. He lives in Toronto with his family.
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 Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. She has won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there with her daughter.
Patrik Svensson is an arts and culture journalist at Sydsvenskan newspaper. He lives with his family in Malmö, Sweden. The Gospel of Eels is his first book.
Patrik Svensson’s Festival appearance is generously supported by the Swedish Arts Council.
Patrik Svensson appears as part of Nordic Bridges 2022.
Alan Cumming is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Not My Father’s Son and an award-winning actor, singer, writer, producer and director. He recently starred in an acclaimed one-man staging of Macbeth on Broadway, and appears on the Emmy Award-winning television show The Good Wife. He won a Tony Award for his portrayal of the Emcee in the Broadway musical Cabaret, a role he reprised in 2014. He has appeared in numerous films, including Spy Kids, Titus, X2: X-Men United, The Anniversary Party, Any Day Now and Eyes Wide Shut. alancumming.com/@alancumming
Patrick Ness is the author of ten previous novels and a short story collection. He won the Carnegie Medal, the highest award for children’s books in the UK, twice in a row for Monsters of Men and the #1 New York Times bestselling novel A Monster Calls, which was also released as a motion picture with a screenplay by Patrick himself. Born in Virginia, Patrick lived in England for twenty years before recently relocating to Los Angeles.
Zoe Whittall is the author of three novels and three volumes of poetry. Her third novel, The Best Kind of People, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and is being adapted as a limited series by director Sarah Polley. Her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, won a Lambda Award for trans fiction, and her debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize. She has worked as a TV writer on the Emmy Award-winning comedy Schitt’s Creek and the Baroness von Sketch Show, for which she won a Canadian Screen Award. She lives in Toronto.
Kevin Sylvester is an award-winning writer, illustrator, reporter, radio sports host, producer, and documentary maker. He writes and illustrates everything from picture books to murder mysteries and science fiction to books on sports and financial literacy. His books include the bestselling Mucus Mayhem in the The Almost Epic Squad, and the MiNRS and Neil Flambé series. Kevin lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Basil Sylvester is a non-binary writer and bookseller. They live in Toronto.