Gary Barwin is a writer, composer and multidisciplinary artist and the author of twenty-six books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long-listed for Canada Reads. Though born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashenazi descent, Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario, and at garybarwin.com.
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Lana Button is the author of a dozen popular picture books. Her books have been translated into 5 languages and have been highlighted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail. They have also been recognized by Bank Street Books, IBBY Canada, and CCBC’s Best Bets and Favourite Book of the Year. Lana’s books have been shortlisted for several awards and she is the recipient of the Crystal Kite Award. Lana is an early childhood educator and a former actress who loves presenting to children in schools and festivals across Canada.
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Called the “Queen of Comedy” by the Toronto Sun, Melodie Campbell was also named the “Canadian literary heir to Donald Westlake” by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Winner of ten awards, including The Derringer (US) and the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, she has multiple bestsellers, and was featured in USA Today. Her publications include over 100 comedy credits, 16 novels and 60 short stories, but she’s best known for The Goddaughter mob caper series. Campbell lives in Burlington, Ontario.
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Denise Da Costa is a Canadian author and visual artist whose debut novel And the Walls Came Down, was published in Summer 2023. She studies Creative Writing as a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, and is an alumna of the Humber School of Writers and the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program. Her work explores the complications of love and the impact of gender, race and class on identity formation.
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Amy Jones is a novelist, editor, and creative writing instructor and mentor. She is the author of the novels Every Little Piece of Me and We’re All in This Together, and the short fiction collection What Boys Like. Her third novel, Pebble and Dove was published by McClelland & Stewart in May, 2023. Originally from Halifax, she currently lives in Hamilton with her husband, writer Andrew F. Sullivan, and her rescue dog, Iggy.
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Chris Pannell’s A Nervous City (2013) won the Kerry Schooley Book Award from the Hamilton Arts Council. In 2010, his book Drive (2009) won the Acorn-Plantos Award for Peoples Poetry and the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry. From 1993 to 2005 he ran the new writing workshop and published two anthologies of work by that group. He is a former board member of the gritLIT Literary Festival and a former DARTS bus driver. He hosts and helps organize the monthly Hamilton reading series Lit Live. His latest book of poetry – Love, Despite the Ache (2016) – won the 2017 Literary Award for Poetry from the Hamilton Arts Council.
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Jessica Rose is a writer, editor, reviewer, and arts organizer whose work has appeared in publications across Canada. She’s a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, the former book reviews editor for THIS Magazine, and a regular contributor to Hamilton City magazine. She’s the current Marketing Manager at gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival and she sits on the Hamilton Arts Council’s Literary Arts Committee. Jessica was recently named the Writer in Residence at CoWork in the Cotton Factory. Her first book for young people, Let’s Get Creative: Art for a Healthy Planet, will be released by Orca Book Publishers in 2024.
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Linda Schuyler is the executive producer and co-creator of over 500 episodes of the multi-award-winning Degrassi television franchise. She is a mentor and guest lecturer and maintains an active involvement in community and professional organizations. Linda is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. She lives with her husband, Stephen Stohn, and Scottish Fold cats in Toronto, Ontario.
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Olivia Skelhorne-Gross is an artist and mother living in Hamilton, Ontario. Since 2017, embroidery has been Olivia’s primary artistic medium through which she explores a variety of subject matters, particularly realistic pet portraits and embroidered patterns for clothing. Over the years Olivia has grown her business through social media, gaining a large and dedicated following of friends and supporters. She has always dreamed of using embroidery to illustrate children’s fiction and was inspired by her three-year-old daughter’s love of singing and reading to create her first book, Round & Round the Garden.
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Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of The Marigold (ECW Press), a novel about a city eating itself, and The Handyman Method (Gallery Books/Saga Press), a novel cowritten with Nick Cutter about home improvement gone wrong. Sullivan is also the author of the novel WASTE (Dzanc) and the short story collection All We Want is Everything (ARP), both named Globe & Mail Best Books of the Year. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
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Jamie Tennant is a writer, author and broadcast(er) director based in Hamilton, ON. He has covered music pop culture both locally and nationally. His debut novel The Captain of Kinnoull Hill was released in 2016. Jamie also hosts the weekly books and literature program/podcast Get Lit. River, Diverted is his second novel.
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Since the early 1980s, John Terpstra has been a mainstay of the Canadian literary scene, publishing both poetry and non-fiction. He has also been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Charles Taylor Prize. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he works as a writer, cabinetmaker and carpenter.
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Scott Thornley grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, which inspired his fictional Dundurn. He is the author of five novels in the critically acclaimed MacNeice Mysteries series: Erasing Memory, The Ambitious City, Raw Bone, Vantage Point, and Middlemen. He was appointed to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 1990. In 2018, he was named a Member of the Order of Canada. Thornley divides his time between Toronto and the southwest of France.
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Anuja Varghese (she/her) is a QWOC Pushcart-nominated writer based in Hamilton, ON. Her work appears in Hobart, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Plenitude Magazine, as well as several other Canadian and international literary magazines and anthologies. Anuja is the Fiction Editor at the Ex-Puritan Magazine, as well as a Board Member for gritLIT (Hamilton’s literary festival), and co-host of LIT LIVE (Hamilton’s monthly reading series). Her debut short story collection, titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press, 2023) explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens. Find Anuja on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok (@anuja_v across platforms) or through her website anujavarghese.com.
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Nathan Whitlock is the author of the novels A Week of This, Congratulations On Everything, and his latest, Lump, which the Toronto Star called “one of the “must-read, hands-down best books of 2023 so far.” Nathan’s writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Walrus, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, the Globe and Mail, Best Canadian Essays, and elsewhere. He is the coordinator for Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing program and makes the weekly author-interview podcast What Happened Next. He lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario. https://www.nathanwhitlock.ca/
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Liz Worth is an author, tarot reader, and host of the Forever ’80s podcast. Her most recent novel, The Mouth is a Coven, was published by Manta Press in 2022. She can be reached at www.lizworthauthor.com
