Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series

Nalo Hopkinson is the author of four novels, and many short stories.  She has been the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers. Brown Girl in a Ring (1998) was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award 1998, and received the Locus Award for Best New Writer.  In 2008 it was a finalist in CBC’s Canada Reads competition.  Midnight Robber (2000) was shortlisted for the James Rl Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2000 and nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2001.  Skin Folk (2001) received the World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic in 2003. The Salt Roads (2003) received the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for positive exploration of queer issues in speculative fiction for 2004, presented at the 2005 Gaylaxicon ceremony.  In 2008 The New Moon's Arms (2007) received the Aurora Award, the Canadian reader-voted award for science fiction and fantasy and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, making her the first author to receive the Sunburst Award twice.

Miguel Syjuco is Filipino in origin, now lives in Montreal.    Illustrado, his first novel, won the Man Asia prize in 2008 and the Grand Prize for the Novel in English at the 2008 Palanca Awards.

Sheniz Janmohamed is an author, poet, freelance writer and spoken word artist and a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Guelph.  Her first book Bleeding Light was published in September 2010 by TSAR Publications.

Drew Hayden Taylor (born 1 July 1962) is a Canadian playwright, author and journalist. Born in Curve Lake, Ontario, Taylor claims both Ojibwa and Caucasian heritage. He writes predominantly about First Nations culture, and has also been a frequent contributor to various magazines including This Magazine. His writing includes plays, short stories, essays and film and television work.  As well as his writing, Taylor has been the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts and has taught at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. He co-created the series Mixed Blessings for Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) in 2007, and has been a writer for The Beachcombers, Street Legal and North of 60.

Johanna Skibsrud is a Canadian writer whose debut novel The Sentimentalists won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize.  She is the youngest writer to receive this award.  Skribsrud has also published two books of poetry, Late Nights with Wild Cowboys in 2008 and I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being in 2010.  Late Nights with Wild Cowboys was a shortlisted nominee for the Gerald Lambert Award.

Lisa Moore, a Newfoundland writer, has written two collections of stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open, as well as a novel, Alligator. Open and Alligator were both nominated for the Giller Prize. Alligator won the Commonwealth Prize for the Canadian Caribbean Region and the ReLit Award, and was longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award.  Open won the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Prize for Short Fiction.  February, her most recent novel, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

David Bergen has published six novels and one collection of short stories since 1993. His debut novel, A Year of Lesser in 1996, was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. His 2002 novel The Case of Lena S. was a finalist for the Governor General’s award for English language fiction and won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. It was also a finalist for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotia Giller Prize received a coveted starred review in the Kirkus Review trade magazine, and was longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award. In 2008 he published his fifth novel, The Retreat, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and which won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. In 2010 he was shortlisted again for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his sixth novel The Matter with Morris.

Alissa York is the author of three novels: Fauna (2010), Effigy (2007) and Mercy (200?) as well as a collection of short fiction Any Given Power.  Both Fauna and Effigy have been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.  Set in the communities around Toronto’s Don Valley ravine, York spins a contemporary human fable, exploring the intricacies of human drama, likewise giving the animals in their natural habitat nestled in Canada’s largest and most cosmopolitan city a voice, reminding us that we are enlivened by our wild population.

Judy Fong Bates came to Canada from China as a young child and grew up in several small Ontario towns.  A writer, storyteller and teacher, she taught elementary school in the city of Toronto for over twenty years. Her stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in literary journals and anthologies. She has written for The Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection China Dog and Other Stories and the novel Midnight at the Dragon Café which was the Everybody Reads selection for Portland, Oregon, and an American Library Association Notable Book for 2006. Her family memoir The Year of Finding Memory was published in April, 2010 by Random House of Canada.

Glen Downie was born in Winnipeg, worked in cancer care for many years in Vancouver, and currently lives in Toronto. He served as Writer-in-Residence at the Medical Humanities Program of Dalhousie University's Faculty of Medicine in 1999. Since 2004, he has operated Tall Tree Press http://talltreepress.com, a micro-press specializing in poetry broadsides and chapbooks.  He has published fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and seven books of poetry. His latest collection is Local News (Wolsak & Wynn, 2011).  His works include Loyalty Management (2007), Desire Lines (2002), The Angel of Irrational Numbers (1991), Heatland (1990) and An E-Ray of Longing (1990). In 2008 Downie received the Toronto Book Award.

Camilla Gibb is the author of four novels: Mouthing the Words (1999), The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life (2002), Sweetness in the Belly (2005) and The Beauty of Humanity Movement (2010)as well as numerous short stories, articles and reviews.  Gibb was the winner of the Trillium Book Award in 2006, a Scotiabank Giller Prize short list nominee in 2005, winner of the city of Toronto Book Award in 2000 and the recipient of the CBC Canadian Literary Award for short fiction in 2001. Her books have been published in 18 countries and translated into 14 languages and she was named by the jury of the prestigious Orange Prize as one of 21 writers to watch in the new century.

The Canadian Writers in Person Series has invited an impressive lineup of emerging and established Canadian writers to read at the York campus. Professors John Unrau, Gail Vanstone, Stephen Cain and Leslie Sanders have directed this course for students and community members.

For over eleven years, students, members of York, the public, and community at large are free to explore the contemporary work of renowned Canadian poets, playwrights, and prolific fiction writers, as well as have a unique opportunity to engage with them in a dialogue about their work.

This film is a compilation of database material/interviews collected over the past five years.

We invite you to join us on December 8th, 2009 at 7pm in 206 Accolade West, for the launch of the film.

A demonstration of how "readers" can access its data-based contents will be followed by a short panel discussion between writers and publishers of Canadian literature, ending with a reception in the lobby adjacent to the lecture hall. Featured at the event will be a display of the Canadian Writers in Person yearly posters.

Special guests will include: Anthony De Sa, Lien Chao, Caitlin Fisher, John Unrau, and others.

RSVP by December 4th

This event is sponsored by U50, the LA&PS Dean's Office, the Department of Humanities, the Centre for Student Success, New College, Stong College, Vanier College, and the Atkinson College Alumni Chapter.

September 22 Andrew Pyper, born in Stratford, Ontario, has received a BA and MA in English Literature from McGill University (Montreal) as well as a law degree from the University of Toronto.

Publications:
The Wildfire Season (HarperCollins Canada, 2005),
The Trade Mission (HarperCollins Canada, 2002),
Lost Girls (HarperCollins Canada, 1999),

Awards and Recognition:
Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel in 2000 and the short-story collection Kiss Me (Porcupine's Quill, 1996).

Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939 and studied Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He taught in Toronto at Humber College and the Humber School for writers from 1967 until 2004.

Publications:
All That Matters (Anchor Canada, 2004),
A Chinatown Childhood (Viking, 1999)
The Jade Peony (Douglas & McIntyre, 1995)
He is also the author of Paper Shadows:

Awards and Recognition:
Shortlisted for the Giller Prize and The Jade Peony (Douglas & McIntyre, 1995)
Winner of the Trillium Book Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award. A Chinatown Childhood (Viking, 1999) which won the Edna Staebler Creative Non-Fiction Award. In 2006 he became a member of the Order of Canada.

Marilyn Dumont holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and has taught creative writing at Simon Fraser University and Kwantlen College.

Publications
She is the author of two collections of poetry.
green girl dreams Mountains (Ooilchan Books, 2001)

Awards and Recognition:
Winner of the Alberta Book Award for Poetry and A Really Good.

Lisa Moore is a novelist and short story writer who lives in St. John?s with her family. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has written for television and radio, as well as for national newspapers.

Publications:
Alligator (House of Anansi Press, 2005)
Open (House of Anansi Press, 2002)
Degrees of Nakedness (The Mercury Press, 1995)

Awards and Recognition:
2005: Giller Prize shortlisted - Alligator
2003:Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing - Open
2002: Giller Prize short-listed - Open
Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award (short fiction)

Larissa Lai was born in California in 1967. She grew up in Newfoundland, and has since lived in Vancouver and Calgary. She has an MA in Creative Writing (University of East Anglia in Norwich, England) and is working on her PhD at the University of Calgary.

Publications
Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen, 2002)
When Fox is a Thousand (Press Gang, 1995),
She is currently at work on her third novel The Corrupted Text.

Awards and Recognition:
When Fox is a Thousand was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
She is currently at work on her third novel The Corrupted Text.

Gil Courtemanche is a journalist in international politics and the author of several non-fiction works. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and Africa for Radio Canada. Un Dimanche à la Piscine à Kigali spent more than a year on Quebec bestseller lists. The novel is currently being made into a film. Courtemanche has also directed several documentary films and won the 2001 Prix des Libraires du Quebec for his first novel A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali.

Dionne Brand is one of Canada's foremost writers. Born in Trinidad, she has lived in Canada since 1970.  Brand is accomplished as both a novelist and a poet, and has also written documentary scripts and directed documentary films with Studio D of the National Film Board.  She has also published essays and critical articles. Her poetry has been short-listed for a number of prizes including the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003. Dionne Brand won the 1997 Governor General's literary award.

Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in Thailand and grew up in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Acta Victoriana, The Fiddlehead, Fireweed, Grain, The Malahat Review, Other Voices, Prairie Fire, Rice Paper Magazine, as well as on CBC Radio. She is part of the editorial collective for big boots, a zine for and by women of colour.  Small Arguments (Pedlar Press, 2003) is a collection of thirty tiny poems originally produced as chap books. Anne Michaels notes that the poet like an actor or rhetorician knows that she whispers in order to be heard, " . . . that small clear voice is the truly subversive voice of poetry".

Ramabai Espinet is author of the novel The Swinging Bridge, described by one critic as one woman's saga of the Indo-Caribbean experience in Trinidad and Toronto. Her novel was long-listed for the 2005 IMPAC Dublin Award and short-listed for the regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In selecting The Swinging Bridge to be included in the 2004 Robert Adams Book Review Literature series, Adams noted ". . , it makes you itch to read. There can be no greater measure of success."

Joan Barfoot is an award winning novelist whose work is compared internationally with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble and Margaret Atwood. Her first novel Abra won the Books on Canada first novel award and Dancing in the Dark was produced in film version, garnering awards at the Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals. Critical Injuries (2001) was long-listed for the 2002 Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the 2001 Trilliam Book Award. Joan Barfoot lives in London, Ontario and worked as a journalist for many years. She was awarded the Marian Engel Award in 1992.

Tessa McWatt was born in Guyana, raised in Toronto, and now lives in London, England. She has published two previous novels: Out of My Skin (1998) and Dragon's City (2001). Dragon's City was short listed for the City of Toronto book award and the Governor General's Award in 2001. McWatt has also published a novella for young adults titled There's No Place Like and is currently producing a film based on the novel To the Wedding.

Afua Cooper is an established writer of non-fiction, history, and poetry. She holds a PhD in African-Canadian history with specialties in slavery and abolition and teaches history at the University of Toronto.

Publications:

Copper Woman and Other Poems (Natural Heritage Books, 2006)
The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal (HarperCollins Canada, 2006)
Utterances and Incantations: women, poetry and dub (Sister Vision Press, 1999)
We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History (co-author) (University of Toronto Press, 1994)
Memories Have Tongue (Sister Vision Press, 1992)
Red Caterpillar On College Street (Sister Vision Press, 1989)
Breakin chains (Weelahs, 1983)
Awards and Recognition: 1994: Joseph Brant award for history - We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History 1992: Finalist for the Casa de las Americas literary award - Memories Have Tongue

Margaret Christakos was born in Sudbury, Ontario in 1962. She obtained her BFA in Visual Arts and Creative Writing from York University in 1985 and her MA in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1995.

Her books include:
Sooner (Coach House Books, 2005),
Excessive Love Prosthesis (Coach House Books, 2002), winner of the 2003 ReLit Award for Poetry,
Charisma (Pedlar Press, 2000), shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award,
Wipe Under a Love (Mansfield Press, 2000),
The Moment Coming (ECW Press, 1998),
Other Words for Grace (The Mercury Press, 1994),
and Not Egypt (Coach House Press, 1989).

Betsy Warland was born in Iowa and studied Art and Education at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. Since emigrating to Canada in 1973, Warland has been active as a poet, writer, educator and editor. She is the director of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University and has taught creative writing at various writing schools. She is a member of the Writers Union of Canada and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild and was writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library.

Publications:
Only This Blue: A Long Poem with an Essay (The Mercury Press, 2005)
Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss (Sumach Press/Second Story Press, 2000)
What Holds Us Here (Buschek Books, 1998)
Two Women in a Birth (with Daphne Marlatt) (Guernica Editions, 1994)
The Bat Had Blue Eyes (Women's Press, 1993)
Proper Deafinitions: Collected Theorograms (Press Gang Publishers, 1990)
Double Negative (with Daphne Marlatt) (gynergy press/Ragweed Press, 1988)
serpent (w)rite: (a reader's gloss) (Coach House Press, 1987)
open is broken (Longspoon Press, 1984)
A Gathering Instinct (Williams-Wallace Press, 1981)

John Unrau was born in Saskatoon in 1941. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he received his DPhil in 1969. He is Professor of English in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University.

His books include:
Iced Water (Salmon Publishing, 2000),
The Balancing of the Clouds (Windflower Communications, 1991),
Ruskin and St. Mark's (Thames & Hudson, 1984),
Looking at Architecture with Ruskin (Thames & Hudson, 1978).

Shauna Singh Baldwin was born in Montreal, grew up in India and currently lives in Milwaukee, USA. She studied at Marquette University and has worked as an independent radio producer and e-commerce consultant, as well as holding various writing residencies.

Publications:
The Tiger Claw (Knopf Canada, 2004)
What the Body Remembers (Knopf Canada, 1999)
English Lessons and Other Stories (Goose Lane Editions, 1996)
A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to America (co-authored with Marilyn Levine) (John Muir, 1992)

Awards and Recognition:
2004: Giller-nominated - The Tiger Claw
2003: Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship
2000: Orange Prize longlisted - What the Body Remembers
Commonwealth Writers Prize (best book from the Canada/Caribbean region) - What the Body Remembers
1997: CBC Radio/Canada Council Literary Award (short story category) - "Satya"
1996: Friends of American Writers Award - English Lessons and Other Stories
1995: Writers Union of Canada Award for Short Prose
1974: Shastri Award for English Prose (Silver Medal)
1973: Jawaharlal Nehru Award for Public Speaking (Gold Medal)

Joseph Boyden studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans and has taught in the aboriginal student program at Northern College, as well as holding various writing residencies. He divides his time between Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches in the creative writing program at the University of New Orleans.

Publications:
Three Day Road (Viking Canada, 2005)
Born With a Tooth (Cormorant Books, 2001)

Awards and Recognition:
2006: Included in "Canada Reads 2006" - Three Day Road
2005: Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" Award - Three Day Road
Governor General's Literary Award nominated - Three Day Road
McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award - Three Day Road
2001: Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award shortlisted - Born With a Tooth

Karen Mac Cormack, born in Luanshya, Zambia is a long time resident of Toronto and holds dual citizenship (British/Canadian). Mac Cormack has published seven books of poetry including Straw Cupid (1987), Quirks & Quillets (1991), Marine Show (1995), The Tongue Moves Talk (1997) and A Robin Hood Book (1996). Her most recent publication is Fit to Print (Coach House Press, 2003) a collaboration with poet Alan Halsey. This collaboration pursues meaning using the newspaper as a format, fusing an interest in mass culture while offering an innovative writing practice.

Kerri Sakamoto is a Toronto-born writer of fiction with an international reputation for film and visual arts criticism. Author of One Hundred Million Hearts (Vintage, 2004) and The Electric Field (Vintage Canada, 1998, Knopf, 1997), Sakamoto was the winner of the 1999 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. Her works have been short-listed for several international awards and the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1998. Her style has been marked by an exquisite sense of the fragile with respect to the human mind and heart. "Hypnotic, haunting, and utterly original" is the way David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly describes her writing. Identified by critics as a major new force in the landscape of Canadian fiction, Sakamoto is anthologized in the celebrated collection of Asian North American writing Charlie Chan is Dead (Norton, 1999) and is a contributor to the Canadian visual arts and literary journal Harbour. One Hundred Million Hearts, described as "stunningly complex and beautifully rendered" (Edmonton Journal), explores questions of identity through memory, love, guilt and complicity in the context of war.

Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer, performance artist and editor and professor at Simon Fraser University. His book of poetry 49th Parallel Psalm (Advance Editions/Arsenal Press, 1999) was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. More recently he compiled Bluesprint: Black British Columbia Literature and Orature (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002) an anthology of Black British Columbian writing and orature featuring work from the gold rush era to today. His interest in musician Jimi Hendrix creates an entry point for Compton to explore questions of form, cultural consciousness and the question of cultural appropriation.

Claire Harris is an esteemed Canadian poet who has published seven books of poetry. She has won the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry and The Writer's Guild of Alberta Poetry Award and has been nominated for a Governor General's Award. A long time resident of Calgary, Harris has worked on various literary magazines and initiatives to promote Canadian poetry (Dandelion magazine and Poetry Goes Public). Harris is one of the founders of blue buffalo an all-Alberta arts magazine. Born in Trinidad, Harris trained and taught as a high school English teacher. She also holds a diploma in Mass Media and Communications from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. A major theme in her poetry is the exploration of injustice and the human spirit whether found in the exercise of violence against women or in the consequences of colonialism. Drawing Down a Daughter (Goose Lane, 1993) offers an autobiographical window into the experiences of friendship, love and motherhood from an African-Canadian perspective.

Thomas King is one of Canada's best-known writers of fiction about Canada's First Nations people. A professor of English at the University of Guelph, King is also a radio personality, a writer and an actor in the popular CBC feature Dead Dog Café and is the writer of critically acclaimed fiction such as Truth and Bright Water (1999) and Green Grass, Running Water (2003), a close contender for the Canada Reads series on CBC Radio 1. His fiction addresses the marginalization of First Nations peoples, illuminating the fabric of stereotypes that constitute forms of racism and celebrates the unique quality and value of First Nations philosophical approach to social relations and with the environment, that make them prophetic in nature. King, the son of a Cherokee father and a mother of Greek and German descent, has begun to write a series of detective fiction under the pseudonym of Hartley Goodweather. The central character Thumps Dreadful Water is a Cherokee photographer who lives in Chinook. Green Grass, Running Water is scheduled to go into filming within the year. Thomas King has a PhD from the University of Utah and teaches Native Literature and Creative Writing. His creative and critical writing has been widely published and have appeared in many journals including World Literature Written in English, the Hungry Mind Review and the Journal of American Folklore. King will read from Truth and Bright Water.

Steve McCaffery is a poet, writer and theorist with a career that spans more than three decades. He is the author of fifteen books of poetry and one novel. His work has often been nominated for literary prizes (twice nominated for the Governor General's Award in Poetry). He is a two-time recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Poetry (1993-94 and 1994-95). A pioneer in the area of sound poetry, McCaffery was one of the original members of the Four Horsemen (along with bp Nichol, Paul Dutton and Rafael Barreto-Rivera). He has performed his poetry internationally and has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Hungarian and is a professor in the Faculty of English at York University.

Miriam Toews was born in Steinbach, Manitoba in 1964 and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of King's College. Aside from her personal writing, she has worked as a freelance journalist. She writes both fiction and non-fiction in the genres of novel, memoir, magazine, newspaper and radio. Winner of the 2004 Governor General' s Award for Fiction, she is the author of two novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck (1996), nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal and winner of the John Hirsch Award, and A Boy of Good Breeding (1998), winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Toews also has one work of non-fiction: Swing Low: A Life (2000), winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction. She has written for CBC, This American Life (NPR), Saturday Night, Geist, Canadian Geographic, Open Letters and The New York Times Magazine, and has won the National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Humour.

Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon is the English translation of Hier, a novel that received wide acclaim in Quebec and is deemed by some to be the synthesis of Brossard's forty years of publishing. In a writing career that spans over four decades of literary innovation, Nicole Brossard has published over thirty books, won the Governor General's award twice, and has also been awarded the prestigious W. O. Mitchell Prize and the Prix Athanase She is an eloquent, thoughtful speaker who captivates the minds of an audience speaking to a lifetime of publishing poetry, fiction and periodicals in not only in French and English Canada but also around the world. Brossard has also co-directed the documentary film Some American Feminists.

Stephen Cain is the author of two previous poetry collections dyslexicon (Coach House Books, 1999) and Torontology (ECW Press, 2001). He lives in Toronto where he is the literary editor at the Queen Street Quarterly and a fiction editor at Insomniac Press. His new work American Standard/Canada Dry will be published by Coach House in Spring 2005. He has also published articles in Canadian Studies in Literature and Open Letter. His research interests lie mainly in the areas of small press and magazine publishing in Canada, Canadian cultural production and avant guard poetry and poetics.

Priscila Uppal has published two earlier collections of poetry: Confessions of a Fertility Expert (1999) and How to Draw Blood from a Stone (1998), and a novel: The Divine Economy of Salvation. Born in Ottawa, Uppal is currently a professor in the Division of Humanities at York University and teaches creative writing.

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka,  and came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen. He has studied creative writing and theatre, earning a B.F from York University. His first novel Funny Boy was published to acclaim in 1994 and won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the U.S. The Lambda Literary Award, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Selvadurai's second novel Cinnamon Gardens was published in Canada, the U.K, the USA and was translated into 6 languages: Italian, French, German, Danish, Spanish and Hebrew. The book was short listed for the Canada's Trillium Award, as well as the Aba Literary Award in Denmark and the Premio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli in Italy. Shyam Selvadurai is the editor of the anthology Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction, published in 2004 in Canada and was recently published in the USA.

Caitlin Fisher is the Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture in Film & Video in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University. She is the curator of the 2004 Images Festival in New Media Works, and the founding editor of j-spot: Journal of Social and Political Thought (an electronic journal of political and cultural theory and criticism). Fisher won the Electronic Literature's Award for Fiction (2001) for her hypertext novel These Waves of Girls. She also appears in Midnight Stranger an inter CD drama in which she collaborated with Jeff Green and Simon Goodwin first published by Gazelle Technologies (San Diego). Her work in digitized story-telling is regarded as pioneering work, creating new sites for the production of Canadian literature. Her story lines are constructed around a combination of her own poetry and digitized images.

M.G. Vassanji has earned well-deserved critical acclaim for The Book of Secrets, 1994 and The In-between Life of Vikram Lall, 2003 and stands in the first ranks of Canadian fiction writers. He is a two-time Giller Prize winner (1994 and 2003) and the 1990 Commonwealth Writers Prize for The Gunny Sack and in 2004 was awarded the Trillium prize for his most recent novel. Vassanji, born in Kenya, Nairobi and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, draws on his experience to explore questions of identity and experience in the Arab-Indian culture, taking on the larger thematic concerns of the intersections between past and present, the assimilation of traditional and contemporary values and the importance of love and safety, conditions that arise out of a sense of community. Indeed, one of the preoccupations in his fiction is the evolution of community from the perspective of the 'ordinary' life caught in the vortex of overwhelming historical events that engulf it. Vassanji has a distinguished international reputation and has established the Toronto South Asian Review to support South Asian Canadian writers and has a doctorate in nuclear physics. Of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, Janette Turner Hospital wrote: "His characters are complex, compelling, revelatory and unforgettable.It is a wounded but quietly stubborn humanity, this refusal to cast single blame on the multifarious injustice that puts Vassanji in Tolstoy's company. Of his own work, Vassanji has said, "I write at night but think about it all the time."

Roo Borson is a poet and essayist and member of the collaborative performance poetry group Pain Not Bread (a name derived from the circumstances surrounding the death of French critic Roland Barthes). Pain Not Bread won the Earle Birney Prize for the poem "Sleep" (1999). Her Selected Poems (1994) was nominated for a Governor General's Award for poetry and she took the Malahat Long Poem Prize in 1993. Borson was also the winner of the CBC Literary Competition for Poetry (1982, 1989) and Personal Essay (1991). Her forth-coming book of poetry Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida (McClelland & Stewart, 2004) was released in the spring of 2004. Borson has served as writer-in-residence at several universities including the University of Western Ontario and Concordia and enjoys an international performance profile.

Shani Mootoo is a writer, a visual artist and a video-filmmaker who develops and explores her particular approach to artistic expression in a multi-disciplinary approach to media. Her collection of short stories Out on Main Street is followed by her first novel Cereus Blooms at Night (Press Gang, 1997). Born of East Indian ancestry in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, Mootoo moved to Canada at age nineteen. Her experience as a multiple immigrant (India, Ireland, England, Trinidad and Canada) emerge, shape and colour her writing. Mootoo traces themes of ethnicity, gender and sexual identities through her work, taking as her main focus the relationship between authenticity and identity. If Out on Main Street explores questions of authenticity and identity through the first-person narration of the main character of the title story of the collection, an Indo-Trinidadian butch lesbian, Cereus Blooms at Night offers a reflective examination of 'socially deviant' identities through hybridity and the sexually divergent. Shani Mootoo currently teaches at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Chester Brown is an acclaimed Toronto cartoonist and author of what one critic described as "the finest graphic novels you could hope to find". His Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (2003), inspired in part by Maggie Siggins. Riel: A Life of Revolution, delivers a cartoon narrative that is entertaining and extensively researched. The story of one of Canada's controversial figures takes on a contemporary context, rendered in the form of a graphic narrative. Brown is also known as a pioneer in the world of underground comics with bizarre and surreal titles. Series like Yummy Fur and Underwater and I Never Liked You contain a strong autobiographical component and project a trenchant political and cultural critique, inviting comparisons with the serialized novel associated with Charles Dickens. In 2004 Chester Brown received three prestigious Harvey Awards for his work: Best Writer (Louis Riel), Best Cartoonist (Louis Riel) and Best Graphic Album of previously published works.

George Szanto is the award-winning author of a dozen books, novels, stories, plays and essays who holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard (Woodrow Wilson Fellow). He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1988. Szanto's first novel, Not Working (St. Martin.s Press, Macmillan, Avon) was short-listed for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Friends and Marriages (Véhicule) won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction (1995) and The Underside of Stories (McClelland & Stewart, Harper & Row) won a National Magazine Award. Szanto.s important fictional trilogy Conquests of Mexico (The Underside of Stones, 1990, The Condesa of M., 2001 and Second Sight, 2004) explores the mystical, religious, and political facets in Mexican culture translated through the voice of the outsider/foreigner, a criminologist named George, who functions as the collector or caretaker of the truth. This literary stance mirrors Szanto.s own research and preoccupation with the "horror stories" coming out of Chiapas and the Peru-Ecuador story. Szanto was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and has lived in England, France, Germany, Mexico, the US and Canada. In the seventies, Szanto was the executive director of New Heritage Theatre in San Diego, later serving as president of Playwrights of Canada. In Montreal he taught at McGill as a professor of communications and cultural analysis before moving to Gabriola Island in British Columbia.

Marlene Nourbese Philip is a Caribbean-born Toronto poet and writer who has published three collections of poetry, including Thorns (Williams Wallace, 1980) and Salmon Courage (Williams Wallace, 1983) as well as fiction and non-fiction, essays and a book of children.s literature. About fiction and poetry, Philip notes: "Fiction is about telling lies, but you must be scathingly honest in telling those lies. Poetry is about truth telling, but you need the lies . the artifice of the form to tell those truths." Philip was made a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 1992. She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks won the Casa de las Americas prize in 1988. Her long narrative poem Looking For Livingstone: an odyssey of silence (1991) explores the complexities of identity construction from a postcolonial theoretical perspective. Philip who also holds an M.A. in Political Science and a law degree from the University of Western Ontario received the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto 'Rebel For A Cause' award in 2001 as .a revolutionary poet, writer and thinker.. She was the recipient of the 2001 YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for her works where "the experience of Black women and girls are foremost.as are issues of belonging, language, place and location."