Stephen Dorsey is a senior-level business, brand, and marketing strategist, with nearly three decades of experience, and a creative writer, director, and producer of visual content. Today, he is the principal of The Fractional CMO, a strategic consultancy, and of Dorsey Studios, a content production development company. A civically engaged community leader, Stephen is a founding member and board member of Democracy House, a grassroots think tank and civic-minded movement dedicated to preserving and strengthening democratic systems and practices in Canada and around the world. He has written numerous articles, most notably a 2020 opinion piece on “White Advantage” in the Globe & Mail. A proud father of two lovely young children, Stephen lives in Roncesvalles, Toronto. Black & White is his first book.
Born on May 22, 1967, in Carbonear, Newfoundland, Séan McCann rose to fame as a founding member of the multi-million-selling folk group Great Big Sea. Today, Séan is a renowned mental health, addiction, and recovery advocate, an Order of Canada recipient and a highly sought-after speaker. Most importantly, though, Séan is a singer who is able to weave his story of surviving 25 years of alcoholism that once masked a dark secret of abuse by his childhood priest, through song. Music is Medicine, and Sing. Share. Survive. are the dictums by which he lives today.
Andre Fenton is an award-winning author, spoken-word artist and arts educator. He has represented Halifax at seven national poetry festivals across Canada, and his award-winning debut novel, Worthy of Love, was published in 2018. Andre’s work focuses on race, self-esteem and creating more representation in young adult fiction. Annaka is Andre’s second novel. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Carol Bruneau is the acclaimed author of three short story collections, including A Bird on Every Tree (2017), and five other novels. Her first novel, Purple for Sky, won the 2001 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award. Bookclub favourite Glass Voices (2007), was a Globe and Mail Best Book. A Circle on the Surface (2018), won the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award. Her reviews, stories and essays have appeared nationwide and two of her novels have been published internationally. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her husband and their dog and badass cat.
Born in Utah, raised in Minnesota, Andrea Aragon has had more jobs than most. She’s been everything from a racehorse hotwalker, a Director of Operations for a manufacturing company, and a waitress to a Chairwoman of a board of directors that oversaw a shelter for abused women and children. Her longest and most important position to date is that of matriarch of her small but mighty family. The daughter of a Vietnam War veteran, she is a fiercely loving mother of two growing boys, two indifferent cats and two bad dogs. She is still married to her second husband, Séan.