Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a programmer, writer and consultant. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. Ryan writes a city affairs column in Hamilton Magazine, and several of his articles have been published in the Hamilton Spectator. His articles have also been published in The Walrus and HuffPost. He maintains a personal website, quandyfactory.com, and has been known to share passing thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, and posts the occasional cat photo on Instagram.

Taien Ng-Chan is an interdisciplinary writer, media artist, researcher and educator. Her work investigates everyday urban life through photography, cinema, poetry, and processes of mapping. Taien incorporates daily travel (from walking and riding the bus to bicycling and driving) as part of her art and research practice. She is a founding member of the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (HPU). Currently, she teaches in Cinema and Media Arts at York University.

Sally Cooper is the author of two acclaimed novels, Love Object and Tell Everything, and the linked story collection Smells Like Heaven. Her writing has appeared in CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries; Electric Literature; Event; The Feathertale Review; Globe & Mail; Grain; The Millions and The New Quarterly. In 2017, her writing was longlisted for the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, the Short Works Prize and the Vancouver Women in Film and Television From Our Dark Side Contest. Sally is a senior editor of Hamilton Review of Books. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Sarah Raughley grew up in Canada writing stories about freakish little girls with powers because she secretly wanted to be one. She is a huge fangirl of anything from manga to SF/F TV to Japanese Role Playing Games, but she will swear up and down that she was inspired by ~Jane Austin~ at book signings. On top of being a YA (young adult) Writer, Sarah is currently completing a PhD in English, because the sight of blood makes her queasy (which crossed Medical School off the list).

Noelle Allen is the publisher of Wolsak and Wynn, a literary press based in Hamilton. She has been the chair of gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival and of the Literary Press Group, a national publishing organization. She also volunteers with the Hamilton Arts Council’s Literary Awards and the Hamilton Review of Books.

Exploring hip-hop poetics and youth empowerment, Hamilton Youth Poets (HYP) was created in 2012 to give the city’s youth the opportunity to develop their creative skills and have their voices heard. HYP has grown steadily and evolved into an arts organization that engages Hamilton youth in the act of telling their own stories through spoken word, verse, multimedia, poetry slam, and new age journalism. This year-round work is then celebrated every spring in an awe-inspiring culmination of the annual youth poetry festival, Louder Than A Bomb Canada.  

Hamilton Youth Poets perform seven sets at Supercrawl 2019 as part of Christopher McLeod’s Project Emergency Pt. 2 installation:

Friday September 13, 8:00pm-8:30pm
Saturday September 14, 12:00pm-12:30pm
Saturday September 14, 4:00pm-7:30pm
Saturday September 14, 7:00pm-7:30pm
Sunday September 15, 12:00pm-12:30pm
Sunday September 15, 4:00pm-7:30pm
Sunday September 15, 7:00pm-7:30pm

Jaclyn Desforges is a Pushcart-nominated writer, editor and workshop facilitator whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse 2, Minola Review, untethered, Mortar Magazine and others. Her first poetry chapbook, HELLO NICE MAN, was published by Anstruther Press in 2019. Her first picture book, tentatively titled Why Are You So Quiet?, will be published by Annick Press and released in 2020. She’s the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award for her short story THE GALL, and is currently completing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Jaclyn lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter and is writing her first full-length collection of poetry.

Jeffrey Round is the Lambda Award-winning author of the Dan Sharp mystery series, the comic Bradford Fairfax mystery series, as well as several other books of fiction and poetry, including the stand-alone mystery Endgame. He is also an award-winning filmmaker, television producer and song-writer. Round’s most recent book is Shadow Puppet (Dundurn Press, 2019). Sixth in the Dan Sharp series, it is a fictional recreation of the real-life serial killings that took place in Toronto’s gay community from 2010 through 2017.

Joyce Grant is a freelance journalist actively involved in literacy. She is the editor of Getting Kids Reading, a non-profit website that works to stimulate a love of reading in children. Grant is also co-founder of the website Teaching Kids News, which offers free daily kid-friendly news.

In Grant’s first picture book, Gabby, the quirky, likeable title character discovers that her alphabet book has a magical quality. Its letters can be used to create anything she likes. When Gabby puts the letters together to create a cat and its natural enemy, Gabby has to think fast! Can she get everyone to become friends?

Grant followed that critically acclaimed book with Gabby series instalments Gabby Drama Queen and Gabby Wonder Girl (the latter an exploration and celebration of girl power). The initial book enters paperback this September via Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Grant has also written a baseball novel. Tagged Out (Lorimer, 2016) set in Christie Pits and focused on a young baseball team. It was followed up with a sequel, Sliding Home, in 2018.

Praise for Gabby:

“Gabby is a colourful and animated picture book that will engage children through its bright illustrations and imaginative text. The story also functions as a creative lesson in how to spell and attach meaning to words.” —CM Magazine
 
“A charming read-aloud story ideal for getting little ones interested in forming their own spelled-out words. Highly recommended.” —Midwest Book Review (The Picturebook Shelf)
 
“Look at this little cutie! Could it be a junior Pippi? No, this little one is Gabby and she’s much more grounded and responsible, but still imaginative.” —CanLit For Little Canadians
 
“The connection between words and the real things they represent is playfully presented in this first book by journalist and editor Joyce Grant.” —City Parent, On The Bookshelf

Julie McIsaac is a writer, artist, maker and momma with years of experience teaching writing at advanced levels. She’s worked in Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal and New York City. While living in NYC, she hosted several salons in her home and loved bringing together creative people in informal spaces. That’s one of the reasons she started hosting writing workshops in Hamilton. Her first book, Entry Level, was published with Insomniac Press in 2012. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

In a powerful combination of prose poems, graphica, lyric poems and lyric essays, Julie McIsaac’s new book is at once fiercely political, intimate and hilarious. We Like Feelings. We Are Serious (Wolsak & Wynn, 2018) is an exploded view of contemporary feminism, sex, loss, beauty myths, self-doubt, psychology, menstruation, resistance, family and love. Intellectually dazzling, emotionally lavish and allergic to bullshit, this is a book that is timely, refreshing and wholly original. Longlisted for the 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.