Praised by the Montreal Gazette as “One of Canada’s best writers”; and by the Globe and Mail as “inventive and electrifying”; David Bergen is the bestselling author of ten novels and two collections of short stories. In book after book, he has harnessed the written word to illuminate
the human condition.
Among his most acclaimed works are The Time in Between, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize; The Matter with Morris, winner of the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Age of Hope, a national bestseller and a finalist for Canada Reads; and Here the Dark, a finalist for the Giller Prize.
David Bergen lives in Winnipeg.

Gloria Ann Wesley is a graduate of St. F.X. and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Mount St. Vincent University. She has the distinction of being Nova Scotia's first published Black poet for To My Someday Child published in 1975. Her YAF novel, Chasing Freedom (2011) was short-listed for the Ann Connor Brimer Award. If This Is Freedom (2013) was the winner of One Book Nova Scotia (2016). Other books include Burlap and Lace, Abigail’s Wish and Righting Canada’s Wrongs – Africville. Her current novel about a member of the No. 2 Construction
Battalion will be released in the fall of 2022. Her interest in researching the origins of Black people in Nova Scotia led her to produce two booklets about the Black Loyalists who settled in Guysborough County: Searching for An Identity (1979) and The Black Loyalists of Little
Tracadie (2004).

El Jones was born in Cardiff, Wales, but raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She now calls Halifax, Nova Scotia her home. Jones studied English at Dalhousie University and served as Halifax’s Poet Laureate since 2013. She first began performing spoken word poetry at a Word Iz Bond open mic, and later became artistic director of Word Iz Bond Spoken Word Artistc Collective.

​Jones has performed all over Canada, including the 10th Anniversary All-Star edition of When Sisters Speak in Toronto. In 2012, she was sponsored by Citizenship and Heritage Canada on a reading tour of Nova Scotia with George Elliott Clarke. Jones teaches in the African Canadian Transition program at NSCC and the Women’s Studies program at Acadia University. She has written many articles for Huffington Post Canada, and in 2014, published her first book of poetry, Live from the Afrikan Resistance! (Roseway Publishing).

Jones advocates for the use of spoken word as a tool for liberation and activism. She is dedicated to using poetry to engage youth and as a resource for prison outreach, finding her inspiration in the Black community of Nova Scotia.

Megan Gail Coles is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the University of British Columbia. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Poverty Cove Theatre Company, for which she has written numerous award-winning plays. Her debut short fiction collection, Eating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome, won the BMO Winterset Award, the ReLit Award, and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and it earned her the Writers’ Trust of Canada 5×5 Prize. Her debut novel, Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a contender for CBC Canada Reads, and it won the BMO Winterset Award. Originally from Savage Cove on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland/ Ktaqmkuk, Megan lives in St. John’s, where she is the Executive Director of Riddle Fence and a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University.

 

HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her 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, was 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.

Jane Doucet writes irreverent novels full of humour and heart—the kind of books she likes to read herself. But the seasoned journalist, whose articles have appeared in myriad national magazines, including Chatelaine and Canadian Living, never planned to write a book. Then, in 2003, when she looked for a lighthearted novel about motherhood indecision that didn’t end with “She had a baby and lived happily ever after,” she couldn’t find one. That’s when she got the (absurd!) idea to try writing one herself. In 2017, Jane self-published The Pregnant Pause, which was shortlisted for a 2018 Whistler Independent Book Award.

Shortly before launching The Pregnant Pause, an idea for another novel popped into Jane’s head. “Nope,” she told herself sternly. “Writing a book is hard and takes too long.” But it was an itch she couldn’t stop scratching. In 2021, Vagrant Press, the fiction imprint of Nimbus Publishing, released Fishnets & Fantasies, about a married couple in their mid-50s who open a sex shop in Lunenburg. Vagrant Press will re-release The Pregnant Pause in spring 2023 and publish Jane’s third novel, also set in Lunenburg, in fall 2023.

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Funny Boy, his first novel, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the US. He is the author of Cinnamon Gardens and Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, and the editor of an anthology, Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. His books have been published in the US, the UK and India, and published in translation in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Israel. His latest novel, The Hungry Ghosts, was published April 2, 2013 in Canada, India and Sri Lanka.

Shyam co- wrote the screenplay for his first novel Funny Boy, for which he won the Canadian Screen Award and the New York Cinema Independent Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shyam’s new novel Mansion of the Moon is a historical novel about the Buddha’s wife, Yasodhara.

Charlie Angus is a politician, author, musician. He has published eight books including his latest work Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals – Birth of a Mining Superpower published by House of Anansi Press.

Mr. Angus has been the member of Parliament of Timmins-James Bay since 2004 and came in second in the national NDP leadership race of 2017. He has been consistently voted among the most effective opposition MPs in Parliament.

Charlie was the co-founder of Shannen’s Dream campaign for Indigenous youth with late Cree youth leader Shannen Koostachin and Cindy Blackstock. This story was included in his award winning book Children of the Broken Treaty (University of Regina Press).

Mr. Angus is the lead singer of the Juno-nominated Grievous Angels and has recently released his eight album Summer Before the Storm.

In his early 20s Charlie and his wife, author Brit Griffin, founded a Catholic Worker house for the homeless. He got his start in politics as an organizer helping to stop the biggest waste dump plan in Canadian history and tackling a toxic waste incinerator scheme. He and Brit Griffin also founded and ran High Grader Magazine for 8 years.

Angus has written extensively on the north, Indigenous issues and mining culture.