Dave Bidini has made a terrific name for himself as a writer with the success of his previous books, The Best Game You Can Name, Baseballissimo, On a Cold Road, and Tropic of Hockey. Bidini wrote and hosted the Gemini Award-winning small-screen adaptation of Tropic of Hockey, called Hockey Nomad, which was first broadcast in January 2003. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Janet, and their two children.

Linda Spalding Is the author of 3 novels and two works of non-fiction, the most recent of which is Who Named the Knife McClelland & Stewart, 2007. She is an editor of Brick, A Journal of Reviews.

Mark Kingwell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of ten books of political and cultural theory, among them the national bestsellers Better Living (1998) and The World We Want (2000), the essay collection Practical Judgments (2002), and, most recently, Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams (2006). His writing has appeared in diverse publications, including Harper’s, the Harvard Design Magazine, the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, American Scholar, the New York Times, the Toronto Star, Adbusters, Queen’s Quarterly, and the Globe and Mail, where he currently writes a biweekly column on ideas. Kingwell has lectured extensively to academic and popular audiences in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australia. He is the recipient of the Spitz Prize in political theory, National Magazine Awards for both essays and columns, and an honorary doctorate from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design for contributions to theory and criticism. His new book, Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City, will be published next spring.

Poetry

Phil Hall's first book, Eighteen Poems, was published in Mexico City in 1973. Since then he has published 13 other books of poems, & 5 chapbooks. Trouble Sleeping (2000) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry. In 2005, Brick Books (celebrating 20 years as Hall’s publisher) brought out An Oak Hunch, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. Most recently, Book Thug has published Hall’s long poem, White Porcupine, & also a revised second edition of his essay/poem, The Bad Sequence.

Sylvia Legris has published three poetry collections, the most recent of which, Nerve Squall (Coach House Books) won both the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2006 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her other books are Iridium seeds and Circuitry of veins, both published by Turnstone Press. Among her other awards are an Honourable Mention for poetry in the 2004 National Magazine Awards, the 2001 Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, nominations for a Pushcart Prize in 2002 and 2001, and the Bliss Carman Poetry Award in 1997. Her work has appeared widely in journals in both Canada and the US. New poetry has recently appeared in Matrix and is forthcoming in Conjunctions and New American Writing.

Di Brandt is the author of 6 books of critically acclaimed poetry, including questions i asked my mother, Agnes in the sky, and Jerusalem, beloved, and Now You Care. She has also published 3 books of creative/critical essays, including Dancing Naked: Narrative Strategies for Writing Across Centuries, and in 2007, So this is the world & here I am in it (NeWest Writers as Critics X, ed. Smaro Kamboureli). Her awards include the CAA National Poetry Prize, the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award, a National Magazine Award and the Gerald Lampert Award for "best first book of poetry in Canada." She has been twice shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, as well as the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Trillium Award and the Griffin Prize. Di Brandt has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Manitoba. She has taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the Universities of Manitoba, Alberta, Winnipeg, and Windsor. She has travelled widely and given readings and lectures at festivals and universities around the world. She is the former poetry editor for Prairie Fire Magazine and Contemporary Verse 2, and currently holds a Canada Research Chair in English at Brandon University, Manitoba.

Short Story

Barbara Gowdy is an award-winning author whose five previous books, The Romantic, The White Bone, Mister Sandman, We So Seldom Look on Love and Falling Angels, have appeared on bestseller lists throughout the world. The recipient of the Marian Engel Award in 1996, she has been a finalist for the the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a repeat finalist for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. She lives in Toronto.

Nino Ricci’s first novel, the best-selling Lives of the Saints, garnered international acclaim, appearing in over a dozen countries and winning a host of awards, including, in Canada, the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and in England, the Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Prize. It was followed by In A Glass House and Where She Has Gone, which completed the trilogy that Lives of the Saints began. Where She Has Gone was shortlisted for the Giller Prize for Fiction. The Lives of the Saints trilogy was recently adapted for a television miniseries starring Sophia Loren, Nick Mancuso, and Kris Kristofferson. Born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, Ricci completed studies at York University in Toronto, at Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of Florence, and has taught both in Canada and abroad. He is a past president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN, a writers’ human rights organization that works for freedom of expression. Nino Ricci’s most recent novel is Testament, published in Canada by Doubleday and in the U.S. by Houghton Mifflin. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was the co-winner of the Trillium Award.

Thomas King is a novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter, and photographer. His father was Cherokee, his mother is Greek. He was born in 1943, raised in Roseville in the central valley of California, and moved to Canada in 1980. He holds a Ph.D. in English/American Studies from the University of Utah and has worked in Native Studies programs in Utah, California, Minnesota, Alberta and Ontario as both a teacher and an administrator for the past thirty-five years..