Luminous Ink (by Tessa McWatt; Dionne Brand & Rabindranath Maharaj)

LAWRENCE HILL is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of The Book of Negroes, which was made into a six-part TV mini-series. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, became national bestsellers. Hill’s non-fiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life, the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures, and Black Berry, Sweet Juice, a memoir about growing up black and white in Canada. Lawrence Hill volunteers with Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society and Project Bookmark Canada. He lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario, and Woody Point, Newfoundland.

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Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war. His debut novel, De Niro's Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, was a finalist for numerous prestigious national and international awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award, and has been translated into several languages and published around the world. His second novel, Cockroach, won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Rawi Hage lives in Montreal.

North Vancouver-born Lee Maracle is the author of numerous critically acclaimed literary works, including Sundogs, Ravensong, Sojourner's Truth and Other Stories, Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, Daughters Are Forever, Will's Garden, Bent Box, Memory Serves, I Am Woman, and Talking to the Diaspora. She is the co-editor of a number of anthologies, including the award-winning My Home As I Remember. A member of the Sto: Loh nation, Maracle is a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, the JT Stewart Award, and the Ontario Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts for 2014. Maracle is currently an instructor in the Aboriginal Studies Program at the University of Toronto, where she teaches Oral Tradition. She is also the Traditional Teacher for First Nation's House and an instructor with the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Maracle has served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington, and received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University in 2009.

Greg Hollingshead has published six books of fiction, including The Roaring Girl, The Healer, and Bedlam. He has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Currently professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and director of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre, in 2011–2012 he served as Chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and in 2012 he was awarded the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto with his wife Rosa Spricer.

George Elliott Clarke’s books include George & Rue, winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; Execution Poems, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry; and Whylah Falls, winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for poetry and chosen for CBC’s inaugural Canada Reads competition. In 2008, he was appointed to the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. He was recently the Poet Laureate of Toronto, from 2012 to 2015, and currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize in two consecutive years, and has won CBC Canada Reads, the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today with her daughter.

Margaret Atwood is known internationally for her award-winning novels, poetry, and short stories. She was born in Ottawa in 1939, and spent much of her childhood in northern Ontario and Quebec. She has lived, studied, and worked in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver, Alliston, and Boston, as well as England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, and Germany.

Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, and Alligator. Caught was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and is now a major CBC television series starring Allan Hawco. February won CBC’s Canada Reads competition, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Alligator was a finalist for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean region), and was a national bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and a national bestseller. Her most recent work is a collection of short stories called Something for Everyone. Lisa lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Eden Robinson is the internationally acclaimed author of Traplines, Monkey Beach, and Blood Sports. Traplines was the winner of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Britain's Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Monkey Beach was nominated for the Giller Prize, the 2000 Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was selected as the Globe and Mail's Editor's Choice. Robinson is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.

Judith Thompson is a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for White Biting Dog and The Other Side of the Dark. In 2006 she was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada and in 2008 she became the first Canadian to be awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play Palace of the End. Judith is a professor of drama at the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto.

Pascale Quiviger was born in Montreal. She holds both a Master’s degree in Philosophy and a degree in Fine Arts. She lives in Italy, where she paints, writes and teaches visual arts. She has exhibited in both Canada and Italy, and has published a collection of short stories, Ni sol ni ciel (2001). Her novel Le cercle parfait won the 2004 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in the French Language; the English edition, A Perfect Circle, translated by Sheila Fischman, was a finalist for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Hiromi Goto is the author of the story collection Hopeful Monsters (Arsenal Pulp Press) as well as the novels The Kappa Child and Chorus of Mushrooms, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Book (Canada-Caribbean) and co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award, and the children's book The Water of Possibility, a selection of the Canadian Children's Book Centre. Her most recent novel is a YA fantasy, Half World and she's co-written a book of poetry with David Bateman entitled Wait Until Late Afternoon. She is the 2009/10 writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

Richard Van Camp is an internationally renowned storyteller and bestselling author. He was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and is a proud member of the Dogrib (Tli?cho?) Dene Nation. He is the author of The Lesser Blessed (Douglas & McIntyre, 1996), a Canadian classic that has been adapted into a feature film with First Generation Films. He lives in Edmonton, AB, with his family.