Jean-Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His work has appeared in Literary Hub, Maclean’s, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and other publications.

Liz Harmer is the author of the novels The Amateurs (2018), finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, and Strange Loops (2023). Her award-winning stories, essays, and poems have been published in Hazlitt, The Walrus, Image Journal, the Globe and Mail, the Malahat Review, the New Quarterly, Lit Hub, Best Canadian Stories, and elsewhere.

Chelene Knight is the author of five books including Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal For Launching a Book With Love (Anansi 2025), and Let It Go: Free Yourself From Old Beliefs and Find a New Path To Joy (HarperCollins Canada 2024). She is founder of her own creative studio, Breathing Space Creative through which she’s launched the Thrive Coaching Program where busy creatives can learn how personal development creates the mindset needed to better manage their energy and make space for all the things they are passionate about.

Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad, and has lived in Canada for over forty years. She is the author of several novels, including Polar Vortex and Cereus Blooms at Night, which is now a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classics book. Her work has been longlisted and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among others. Her poetry collections include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or.She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary’s James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, and The National Library’s Library and Archives Scholar Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.