Ian Ferguson won the 2004 Stephen Leacock Medal for his book Village of the Small Houses. He is the co-author (with his brother Will Ferguson) of the bestseller How to be a Canadian, which was shortlisted for the Leacock and won the 2002 Libris Award for non-fiction. He is also an award-winning playwright (Elephant Shoes, Uncle Joe Again, The Daughters of Judy LaMarsh, and many others) and has worked extensively in radio & television, including creating the CBC TV show "Liquid Soaps." He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Vancouver.

© Joy Von Tiedemann

Marni Jackson is the author of two nonfiction books - The Mother Zone and Pain: The Science and Culture of Why We Hurt. She has worked in film, TV, theatre and publishing, taught creative writing at Ryerson Polytechnic and has won numerous National Magazine Awards for her feature writing and columns.  She is currently on the faculty of the Banff Centre Mountain Literature program and works in Toronto as a senior editor at The Walrus magazine.

© Don Denton

Wayne Grady is a science and nature writer, translator and magazine journalist who has written 10 books of nonfiction -- most recently Bringing Back the Dodo: Lessons in Natural and Unnatural History, 2006.

He has won three Science in Society Awards, the Governor-General's Award for Literary Translation, and numerous National Magazine Awards.
He lives north of Kingston, Ontario, with his wife, novelist Merilyn Simonds.

Poetry

Barry Dempster is the author of a novel, two volumes of short stories, a children's book, and nine collections of poetry. His most recent collection, The Burning Alphabet, was nominated for a Governor General's Award and won the Canadian Authors Association Chalmers Award for Poetry. He is also an editor with Brick Books.

Donna Bailey Nurse is a literary journalist and the author of two books Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing and What's A Black Critic To Do? Interviews Profiles and Reviews of Black Writers. She is a frequent book critic for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the Montreal Gazette,and her articles exploring race and culture have appeared in these publications as well as Maclean's, Publishers Weekly, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. She lives in Toronto.

© Star Black

Molly Peacock, Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada, is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, published by Penguin Canada/ W.W. Norton and Company (US and UK). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Paris Review. Her articles and reviews appear in the Globe and Mail, House and Garden, and Oprah magazine. Peacock, born in the US, has been a Permanent Resident of Canada since 1993 and has just become a Canadian citizen. Former Poet-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario, she has read her work at libraries, universities, and festivals throughout Canada.

Short Story

Lisa Moore is the author of two short story collections, Degrees of Nakedness and Open and the novel, Alligator. She also introduced and selected the short stories for The Penguin Book of Contemporary Canadian Women's Short Stories (2006). Both Open and Alligator were nominated for the Giller Prize and Alligator won the Commonwealth Literary Prize for the Canadian Caribbean Region. Lisa lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.  

Russell Smith is the author of several books of fiction. His most recent novel, Muriella Pent, was long-listed for the Impac Dublin Literary Prize, and shortlisted for the Rogers Fiction Prize. He writes a regular column on language for the Globe and Mail.

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist and documentary filmmaker. Her novels, My Year of Meats (Viking Penguin, 1998), and All Over Creation (2003)--both New York Times’ Notable Books--have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her films have been screened internationally and broadcast on public television in the United States. Ozeki’s films and fictions explore issues in science, history, food, and multicultural identity; they are humorous and often harrowing investigations of the areas where the political and the personal meet. Ozeki immigrated to Canada in 2001 and lives in British Columbia with her husband, artist Oliver Kellhammer.