Waiting (by Rona Altrows & Julie Sedivy)

Susan Olding was named one of The New Quarterly's "Most Loved Living Writers" alongside authors including Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies across Canada and the United States. She has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, two Western Magazine Awards, and a CBC Literary Award; she is also a two-time winner of the Event Creative Non-fiction Contest and a winner of the Prairie Fire Non-fiction Contest. Susan earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Education from Queen's University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She has been a frequent contributor to several discussion groups, workshops, and web resources for adoptive parents. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies. Susan Olding currently lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.

Margaret Macpherson holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and has worked as a teacher and journalist in Halifax, Bermuda, and Vancouver. She currently lives in Edmonton with her husband and four children.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn was born and raised in Western Canada and moved to Nova Scotia in 1983. An ethnographer and essayist, she is the author and editor of six academic books on research and literacy. Her first book of poems, all the perfect disguises, appeared in 2003. She was appointed Poet Laureate for Halifax for 2005-2009.

Leslie Greentree is the author of two books of poetry, guys named Bill (2002) and go-go dancing for Elvis (2003), shortlisted for the Griffin Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her short story, The Brilliant Save, was a winner of CBC Radio's annual Alberta Anthology competition. Leslie has read across much of Canada and at the Dublin Writers’ Festival. She lives in Red Deer, Alberta. This is her first book of short stories.

Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative at the University of Calgary. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada’s literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. Her novel, No Fixed Address, was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.

SHARON BUTALA is an award-winning and bestselling author of both fiction and non-fiction. Her classic book The Perfection of the Morning was a #1 bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Fever, a short story collection, won the 1992 Authors’ Award for Paperback Fiction and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book (Canada and Caribbean region). Butala is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate from 2005–2007. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for non-fiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com.

Wendy McGrath’s most recent novel Broke City is the final book in her Santa Rosa Trilogy. Previous novels in the series are Santa Rosa and North East. Her most recent book of poetry, A Revision of Forward, was released in Fall 2015. McGrath works in multiple genres. BOX (CD) 2017 is an adaptation of her long poem into spoken word/experimental jazz/noise by QUARTO & SOUND. MOVEMENT 1 from that CD was nominated for a 2018 Edmonton Music Award (Jazz Recording of the Year). She recently completed a collaborative manuscript of poems inspired by the photography of Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk and Tongue Helmet. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction has been widely published.