Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer living in Brantford, Ontario. She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt and many others. She’s had essays nominated for National Magazine Awards for three straight years, winning Gold in 2017, and her short fiction was selected for Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and Journey Prize Stories 30. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, was a #1 national bestseller and was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction. Alicia’s second book, And Then She Fell, a novel that was published last fall, was also a national bestseller, and was a Globe and Mail and CBC Best Book of the Year.

Brandi Bird is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on the land of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam peoples.
Their chapbook I Am Still Too Much was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in Spring 2019. Their first full-length poetry collection The All + Flesh was published by House of Anansi Press in Fall 2023. Their work can also be found in Poetry is Dead, Catapult, Hazlitt, Brick Magazine and others.

Morrigan Bonegardener is a first-year creative writing student at Selkirk College in Castlegar, and a Queer, Transgender Woman whose writing style and voice reflect her lived experience. She lives with her husband, two dogs, cat, bird, and fish on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Sinixt Peoples. Two of her poems were recently published in the Black Bear Review and she was recently the recipient of Excellence Awards in Creative Writing and English, among other subjects.

Corinna Chong‘s first novel, Belinda’s Rings, was published by NeWest Press in 2013, and her reviews and short fiction have appeared in magazines across Canada. The Whole Animal, a collection of short stories, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2023, and includes “Kids in Kindergarten,” which won the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize, and “Love/Cream/Heat,” which was selected for The Best Canadian Stories 2024, published by Biblioasis. Bad Land, her second novel, will be released in Fall 2024 with Arsenal Pulp Press. Corinna lives in Kelowna, BC and teaches English, creative writing, and fine arts at Okanagan College.

Matt Rader is an award-winning author of six volumes of poetry, a collection of stories and a book of nonfiction. His most recent collection is Fine (2024). His previous book of poems, Ghosthawk (2021), was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan and lives in Kelowna, BC.

Madeline Setzer, a multidisciplinary artist based in Nelson, BC, has seen her screenwriting featured on international platforms. Amidst her pursuit of a Psychology degree, she remains committed to refining her craft in creative writing through continued studies at Selkirk College.