Thank you for attending Can*Con 2023. See you in 2024!
2023 Editor Guest of Honour
Nivia Evans
2023 Author Guests of Honour
Fonda Lee
Annalee Newitz
2023 Agent Guest of Honour
Sara Megibow
Special Guests
Panelists & Additional Guests
Claudie Arseneault is an easily-enthused aromantic and asexual writer with a never-ending cycle of obsessions but an enduring love for all things cephalopod and fantasy (together or not!). She writes stories that centre platonic relationships and loves large casts and single-city settings, is a founding member of The Kraken Collective, an alliance of self-publishing SFF authors, and the creator of the Aromantic and Asexual Characters Database.
Charlotte Ashley is a writer, editor, bookseller, musician, mother, beekeeper, activist, and corporate shill who now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her two kids, three cats, and bees. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, PodCastle, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and she has been nominated for both the Aurora and Sunburst awards.
Christian Baines is an awkward nerd turned slightly less awkward author of weird and dark fiction. His work includes the gay paranormal series The Arcadia Trust, and My Cat’s Guidet To Online Dating. Born in Australia, he now travels the world whenever possible, living and writing in Toronto, Canada on the occasions he can’t find his passport.
Beverly Bambury has been a book publicist since 2012. She has worked with writers from most genres, including horror, mystery, crime, SFF, and others. Originally from Tampa, Florida, Beverly resides in Brampton, Ontario. She lives there with her husband, teenage stepson, two very small dogs and two normal-sized cats.
Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and Kaleidotrope, anthologies from Neon Hemlock and World Weaver Press, and she wrote the interactive Nebula Award-finalist game The Luminous Underground for Choice of Games. Her story “The Mathematics of Fairyland” won the Aurora Award for Best Short Story in 2022. Find her online at www.phoebebartonsf.com or on Twitter at @aphoebebarton.
Chris Bell (he/him) is Managing Editor for Detroit-based indie publisher Atthis Arts. With a particular fondness for speculative fiction, Atthis Arts strives to publish quality books that honor the authentic and artistic voice of authors while striving for social responsibility. An accomplished typesetter and e-book techie, Chris produces all print-ready files and e-book distributions for Atthis Arts in addition to managing the company’s legal and financial affairs. Chris also provides freelance interior design and typesetting services to indie-published authors and is proud to be found on the copyright and acknowledgment pages of several best-selling and award-winning books. If he had free time, you might find him on the golf course.
Rebecca Bennett writes speculative fiction with small town flair. Her short stories and poetry have been published in Translunar Travellers Lounge, Strange Horizons, Bourbon Penn, Luna Station Quarterly and other literary locations. She is the Managing Editor at Heartlines Spec, a new Canadian-focused speculative fiction magazine and a Senior Editor & Art Director at Apparition Lit. She wrote Burying Ground on Pavel Theta, a Mothership TTRPG oneshot with SSTO Press and has more forthcoming.
Amelinda Bérubé writes about ghosts and monsters and other things that go bump in the night. She is the author of two YA novels, The Dark Beneath the Ice and Bram Stoker Award finalist Here There Are Monsters. After a dozen years as a writer and editor in the Canadian public service, Amelinda is living the freelance dream while herding a couple of kids and an assortment of animals. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in a perpetual whirlwind of unfinished craft projects, cat hair, and dog toys.
Melissa Blair (she/her) is an Anishinaabekwe from Turtle Island (North America) who loves to tell stories about Indigenous and queer characters, preferably both. Her works explore themes of colonialism, queerness, and identity. When she isn’t writing she can be found chilling with her dog on a hike, reading a book, or sharing Indigenous books on TikTok (@melissas.bookshelf). Currently, the first two books in her fantasy romance series The Halfling Saga have been released and will be accompanied by her first sapphic, Indigenous romance next year.
KT Bryski is an award-winning fantasy author. Their short fiction has appeared in Best American SFF, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Apex, the Deadlands, PodCastle, Lackington’s, and others. KT has won the Parsec Award and has been a finalist for the Eugie, Sunburst, and Aurora. When not writing, they enjoy choral music and craft beer.
A tall queer guy writing (mostly) shorter queer fictions, ‘Nathan Burgoine tends to exist somewhere within the Romance, YA, or Spec-Fic categories (often overlapping), but always queer. A former bookseller of a couple of decades, ‘Nathan lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his husband and their rescued husky.
When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favourite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, occasionally teaching at the University of Ottawa, and cuddling her cat. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, teaching about historical death, and cuddling a furry murderer.
Kaitlin Caul is a Canadian author, artist, and chef of Polish descent. This heritage granted her a love for all things pickled. Including her own liver.
By day, Kaitlin work as a PowerPoint wizard and Sales Effectiveness Coordinator. By night, she splits her time between group writing projects, video games, and Dungeons and Dragons. She is also an avid spokesperson, municipal liaison, and participant in NaNoWriMo.
Her time with the non-profit began back in 2011, where she drafted her first novel, Life After Redby. Kaitlin has a number of short stories published through various online and in print anthologies, and never misses an opportunity to challenge herself with new ideas.
Carolyn Charron is the author of Hunting a Sea-Glass Heart, the tale of a menopausal pirate returning to the sea, available Sept 2023 from Renaissance Press. Her short stories have appeared Nothing Without Us, an anthology of disabled writers nominated for a 2020 Prix Aurora award and in three of Flame Tree Publishing’s Gothic Fantasy anthologies among others. On the editor’s side of her desk, she read slush for Apex, Lightspeed and Nightmare Magazines and has been a juror for Speculative Literature Foundation grants.
E. L. Chen is the author of The Good Brother and Summerwood/Winterwood, the latter of which was longlisted for the Sunburst and recommended as a Best Book for Kids and Teens by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Her short fiction has been published in venues such as Strange Horizons, On Spec, Lackington’s, and The Dark. She lives in Toronto with her son.
P.A. Cornell is a Chilean-Canadian author who wrote her first speculative story when she was just eight years old. A member of SFWA and graduate of the Odyssey workshop, her short fiction has appeared in multiple genre markets and anthologies. Her story, “Splits,” went on to win Canada’s 2022 Short Works Prize for Fiction. That same year, she published her debut novella, Lost Cargo. When not writing, Cornell can be found assembling intricate Lego builds or drinking ridiculous quantities of tea. Sometimes both. To find out more about the author and her work, visit her website pacornell.com.
An Ottawa teacher by day, Brandon Crilly has been previously published by Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Haven Spec, and other markets. His debut fantasy novel Catalyst was published by Atthis Arts in October 2022, followed shortly by his first games publication, Bestiarium Vocabulum, from Fat Goblin Games. He’s also an Aurora Award-winning podcaster, Programming Lead for Can*Con, and regularly has too many D&D campaign ideas than he could ever fit into his schedule.
Megan M. Davies-Ostrom is a Canadian author with a penchant for horror and dark speculative fiction. Her work includes both Adult and Young Adult fiction. She is a member of the Canadian Author’s Association.
Megan is also a Senior Analyst with the Government of Canada and has a Master’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology.
Megan lives in Ontario with her husband, daughter, and two (strange) cats. When not writing or carrying-out the duties of her civil-servant alter-ego, she enjoys hiking, reading, and playing board games.
Megan is represented by Becky LeJeune of Bond Literary Agency.
Randee Dawn is a Brooklyn-based entertainment journalist who scribbles about the glam world of entertainment by day, then spends her nights crafting wild worlds of fiction. Her debut novel “Tune in Tomorrow,” about a fantastical TV reality show, published in 2022 (Solaris). She’s the co-editor of the anthology “Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles,” and has published numerous short stories and novellas of speculative fiction. She writes about the wacky world of show business for Variety, The Los Angeles Times and Today.com and is the co-author of “The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion.” Find out more at RandeeDawn.com
A.M. Dellamonica’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Their fourth, A Daughter of No Nation, won the 2016 Prix Aurora for Best Novel. They have published over fifty short stories in Tor.com, Asimovs SF, and elsewhere, along with poetry, pop culture essays, and even the 2021 play Dressed as People, which they co-wrote with Kelly Robson and Amal El-Mohtar. Their newest novels, Gamechanger and Dealbreaker, were released under the name L.X. Beckett and are solarpunk adventures that imagine humanity surviving climate change and creating a post-carbon economy.
Ashley Deng is a Canadian-born Chinese-Jamaican author of dark fantasy and horror. She holds a BSc in biochemistry, specializing her studies toward making accessible the often-cryptic world of science and medicine. When not writing, she is a hobbyist medical/scientific illustrator and spends her spare time overthinking society and culture. Her work has appeared at Nightmare Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Augur Magazine, and others. Her climate horror novella, DEHISCENT, is available from Tenebrous Press. You can find her at ashedeng.ca or on various social media as @ashesandmochi and @baroqueintentions.
Sean Dowie is a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow, a book reviewer at Locus Magazine/Nerds of a Feather, and a writer of weird fiction. Nothing makes him happier than thoughtful analysis and unbridled creativity. He resides in Toronto, Canada with his thoughtfully analytical and unbridled creative dog.
Jon Evans is the author of the science fiction novel EXADELIC (Tor Books, 2023) and eight other novels, including the Arthur Ellis Award-winning DARK PLACES. He has also been CTO of the software consultancy HappyFunCorp, TechCrunch’s weekly opinion columnist, a journalist who has traveled to more than 100 countries and reported from Iraq, Haiti, Colombia, and the Congo, a University of Waterloo electrical engineering alumnus, and the founding director of the GitHub Archive Program. He currently works at the AI/forecasting platform Metaculus.
Susan Forest is the author of dual Aurora Award-winners Bursts of Fire (2019) and Flights of Marigold (2020) as well as over 25 internationally-published short stories (Analog, Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies). She edits an award-winning anthology series for Laksa Media Groups, was Editor Guest of Honor at Keycon in 2022, and most recently co-edited Life Beyond Us, through the European Astrobiology Institute, 2023. Gathering of Ghosts, the third novel of her Addicted to Heaven series (2023) confronts issues of addictions in an epic fantasy world of intrigue and betrayal.
Warren Frey is a journalist for two B2B publications and is a podcaster at Radio Free Skaro, video editor and fiction writer in his spare time. He’s currently working on a novel and a non-fiction book.
JF Garrard is an award-winning speculative fiction writer, editor and publisher. She is the President of Dark Helix Press, host of the Artsy Raven podcast, Co-President for the Canadian Authors Association’s Toronto Branch, and Deputy Editor for Ricepaper Magazine. Her portfolio of books and short fiction is listed on jfgarrard.com and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram @jfgarrard.
Renée Gendron has written romantic mysteries, contemporary romances, historical western romances, sci-fi romances, and fantasy romances. Renée is the current president of the Ottawa Romance Writers, and is a founding member of A Muse Bouche Review.
Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space! Her short stories appear in Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, We Shall Be Monsters, Mighty: Tales of Disabled Superheroes, There’s No Place, and Stargazers: Microtales from the Cosmos. Cait also founded The Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too anthologies, whose authors and protagonists are disabled, d/Deaf, Blind or visually impaired, neurodivergent, Spoonie, and/or they manage mental illness.
Regina M Hansen is the author of the young adult supernatural novel The Coming Storm, from Atheneum Books for Young Readers, and a nominee for the 2022 Red Maple and Mythopoeic Awards. Her nonfiction essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, Enchanted Living, The Wall Street Journal Review, and The Conversation, andthe children’s magazine Dig Into History (formerly Calliope). Her scholarly collection (with Jeffrey Weinstock) Giving the Devil His Due: Satan and Cinema (Fordham UP, 2021) was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. She teaches at Boston University.
Jason M Harley is a a queer, non-binary SFF fiction writer and university professor who conducts research on the use of AI and biometrics in simulation training. They hold degrees in psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship in computer science. Jason’s research has been featured in The Guardian and CBC, while their fiction has appeared in Tesseracts, Perihelion Science Fiction and elsewhere. Their educational graphic novel, Fake News and Dinosaurs: The Hunt for Truth Using Media Literacy, has been featured on Global News TV and The Toronto Star. Jason lives in Montreal, Quebec with their husband.
Lydia M. Hawke is an (almost) award-winning author of urban fantasy, having achieved semi-finalist status in the 2022 PW Booklife Prize with Becoming Crone, the first book in her most recent series, the Crone Wars. The series pushes age boundaries with a 60-year-old grandmother as the chosen one–and is a play on words that Lydia will take pride in forever and ever.
Kate Heartfield’s recent novels include The Embroidered Book, a 2022 bestseller in the UK and Canada, The Valkyrie, a retelling of Norse and Germanic legends, and two tie-in novels in the Assassin’s Creed universe. Her 2018 debut novel (republished in 2023 as The Chatelaine) won Canada’s Aurora Award, and her novellas, stories and games have been shortlisted for multiple awards. A former journalist, Kate lives in Ottawa, Canada.
Geneviève Hébert-Jodoin is a French-Canadian neurodivergent trans woman, and long-time organizer in online fanfiction circle and the Ottawa amateur writers community. She is also a former lawyer with a dual degree in Civil and Common Law, current Privacy analyst and occasional historical content designer for Paradox games. When not doing that, she’s busy studying storytelling and worldbuilding, history, mythology and French-Canadian folklore.
Ashley Hisson is the Managing Editor at Wolsak & Wynn Publishers, where she started as an intern in 2008. As of 2021, she is one of the acquiring co-editors for the Poplar Press imprint with Jennifer Rawlinson and Andrew Wilmot. When not working or reading, you’ll likely find her knitting while watching fantasy, sci-fi or superhero movies.
Ada Hoffmann is the author of the OUTSIDE trilogy, as well as dozens of speculative short stories and poems. They are an autistic self-advocate, an adjunct professor of computer science, a former semi-professional soprano, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and LARPer. They live in eastern Ontario.
K. V. Johansen is the author of the five-book epic fantasy series Gods of the Caravan Road, the first of which, Blackdog, was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunburst Award. She has also written a number of books for children and teens, including Torrie and the Pirate-Queen (2006 Lilla Stirling Award from the Canadian Authors’ Association, Silver Birch list), Torrie and the Firebird (Ontario Library Association Top Ten Best Bets for Children), Torrie and the Snake Prince (OLA Top Ten Best Bets, IBBY 2011 list of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities), and Nightwalker (Winner of the 2008 Ann Connor Brimer Award; VOYA Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror 2007; OLS Best Bets Top Ten list 2007), as well as two works on the history of children’s fantasy literature. She has an M.A. from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto and a second M.A. in English Literature at McMaster University, where she wrote her thesis on Layamon’s Brut, an Early Middle English epic poem. She is a member of the SFWA and the Writers’ Union of Canada. In 2014, she was an instructor at the Science Fiction Foundation’s Masterclass in Literary Criticism held in London. Various of her books have been translated into French, Macedonian, and Danish. As Kris Jamison, she is the author of the novel Love/Rock/Compost.
Mélodie Joseph is a fantasy writer born in Martinique in 1995. She grew up in Saint-Martin and has lived in Montreal for several years. She loves to create new worlds and write books about reckless characters living incredible adventures. La respiration du ciel is her first novel.
Dr. Ariel Kroon (she/her) is an independent settler scholar with a PhD in English from the University of Alberta, where her research focused on crisis narratives in Canadian post-apocalyptic science fiction published 1948-1989 and how we can interpret and learn from these narratives in an age of climate catastrophe. She has published on queer futurities (SFRA Review), solarpunk (The Goose), and affect (Canadian Literature). She was nonfiction co-editor of Solarpunk Magazine 2021-22 and is currently co-host and co-producer of Solarpunk Presents podcast. Connect with Ariel at her website or on Mastodon @arielkroon@wandering.shop.
David Neil Lee’s “Midnight Games” trilogy is complete with this month’s publication of The Great Outer Dark. His young protagonist, Nate Silva, has defended his home town of Hamilton, Ontario against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos – aided at times by H.P. Lovecraft himself – in two previous books: The Midnight Games won a Hamilton Literary Award for the book that “best conveys the spirit of Hamilton,” and its sequel The Medusa Deep made the CBC list of “Best Books of 2021” in the Young Adult category. David has also written books on jazz, and a best-selling history of the chainsaw.
Vivian Li is a queer writer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. Her creative works are published or can be found in Uncanny, Strange Horizons, F&SF, The New Quarterly, among others. She was recently a Finalist for the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award. Her first musical dramedy premiered at the 26th Reel Asian International Film Festival, and her debut chapbook, Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You (845 Press), was published last year. An editor for Augur, she can be reached @vivianlicreates.
Kari Maaren is a writer, cartoonist, musician, and academic whose first novel, the YA fantasy Weave a Circle Round, was published by Tor Books in 2017. It tied for the 2018 Copper Cylinder Award (YA category), was a finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, and was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award (YA category). Kari has a completed webcomic, West of Bathurst, and an active one, the quadruple-Aurora-winning It Never Rains, and she has produced two independent albums, Beowulf Pulled My Arm Off and Everybody Hates Elves. She lives in Toronto with too many musical instruments and an astounding number of books.
Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Her first book, Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022), was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her chapbook, Remitting (Baseline Press, 2019) won the bpNichol Prize. Her work has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and other prizes.
Evan May is a fantasy writer and history teacher living in Ottawa. His most recent book, Easter Pinkerton and the Case of the Heretic Blood, was published last fall by Renaissance Press.
By day, Luke R. J. Maynard is a mild-mannered lawyer. By night, he is a writer, poet, scholar, lapsed medievalist, musician, and wearer of sundry other hats in the arts & letters. Born in London, Ontario, he received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Victoria in 2013, and his JD in Law at the University of Toronto in 2019.
Luke is best known in the SFF world as the author of the Travalaith Saga, an ongoing series that brings classic high fantasy into the modern age with a diverse ensemble cast. Living and working with Multiple Sclerosis as both a civil litigator and a fantasy writer, Luke is a fierce advocate for people with disabilities in both the real world and the realm of the imagination.
Kim McCarthy (any pronouns) wants to live in a world where tea is always on hand, diabetic-friendly snacks are plentiful, and there are about a thousand more hours in a day. They serve as an event coordinator for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which means that each November they work tirelessly to encourage Ottawa denizens to release the creative writer within. When not writing or at their day job, you’ll find them listening to audiobooks, playing D&D, or being overrun by their army of fur-children.
Selena Middleton is a publisher and editor in chief at Stelliform Press, a small Canadian press that focuses on speculative environmental stories and climate fiction. Since it’s beginnings in 2020, Stelliform Press books have been nominated for the Crawford Award, the Utopia Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, have landed on the Otherwise Honor List, and won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novella. She writes fiction as Eileen Gunnell Lee and has been published in Nightmare Magazine, Escape Pod, Reckoning, Fusion Fragment, Friends Journal, and more.
Ira Nayman writes humorous science fiction. He is the author of eight novels, most recently THE UGLY TRUTH, the final instalment of the Multiverse Refugees Trilogy. He has also had two dozen short stories published, most recently “Girls Rule the Cyberpunk World!” in BRAVE NEW GIRLS 7 and “ePik Flayl Creates the Wor(l)d…Again” in DREAMING THE GOD. He was the editor of AMAZING STORIES magazine and AMAZING SELECTS for three years. His first anthology as editor, THE DANCE, will be published by Dark Dragon Press late in 2023 or early in 2024.
M Negrijn is a former archaeologist and interpreter. She’s fascinated by old things and loves knitting, lace tatting and any other fabric arts she can procrastinate with. She’s been writing for over thirty years, focusing on how people find connection and even fall in love. She escapes reality on her bikes and through reading too many books to list anywhere. She continues to write because she must. M Negrijn lives in Canada with her husband and a cat that’s too smart for her own good.
Nina Nesseth is a professional science communicator and writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is the co-author of The Science of Orphan Black (ECW Press, 2017) and made her solo debut with Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films (Nightfire, 2022). She also writes for Dread Central, where she digs deeply into the intersection between horror and science.
Sarah Parkinson is a lawyer practising in Toronto. She received an LL.B. from the University of Windsor and a J.D. from the University of Detroit Mercy. She was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2011. She obtained a Honours BA from the University of Toronto, specializing in History and majoring in English. She was a Copy Editor and Assistant Editor at the Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues and a Panel Editor at Idiom: the English Students’ Union Undergraduate Journal. She is an avid reader and traveler.
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Western Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. She has published speculative fiction, poetry, and nonfiction internationally, including in Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, Fusion Fragment, On Spec Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her speculative poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was published by Android Press in April 2023. Find her on Twitter as @MariscaPichette and Instagram as @marisca_write.
Born in France, Pascal Raud moved in 2001 to Quebec, where he makes his living as a literary translator. He has been an editor for the French-Canadian science fiction magazine Solaris since 2015. As a writer, he focuses on fantasy and science fiction. Since 2008, he has published about twenty short stories in magazines (paper and web) and anthologies. His fantasy short story “La Mémoire du papillon” won the 2021 Aurora-Boréal Award. As a translator (English to French), he has published fourteen novels and eighteen short stories (mystery and SFF). He is a trans man and recently began writing poetry about transidentity. He is currently working on a queer and hopepunk fantasy novel.
Vanessa Ricci-Thode is a word sorceress who loves a good story. She’s a NaNoWriMo veteran, a Halloween enthusiast, and a bookish geek who loves dragons, dogs, astronomy, and travel. If she’s not hibernating, she can be found in her butterfly garden, achieving her final form as a forest witch.
Erin Rockfort is an Ottawa-based writer, podcaster, and therapist. They have been published in Translunar Travelers Lounge and Nothing Without Us Too, and have an upcoming story in Mighty: An Anthology of Disabled Superheroes. When not writing, they can be found crafting, playing video games, and thinking too deeply about tv shows.
A former analyst at Oracle and programmer for Harvard, N. R. M. Roshak now writes about the intersections of technology and imagination with our loves, hopes, desires, and work. Their works include short fiction, kidlit, non-fiction, poetry and translation; their award-winning short fiction has been published in four languages, and has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Flash Fiction Online, Galaxies SF, Daily Science Fiction, and Future Science Fiction Digest. They live in Ottawa with a small family and a loud cat. Come read their work at http://nrmroshak.com.
Lynne Sargent is a writer, aerialist, and holds a Ph.D in Applied Philosophy. They are the poetry editor at Utopia Science Fiction magazine. Their work has been nominated for Rhysling, Elgin, and Aurora Awards, and has appeared in venues such as Augur Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Daily Science Fiction. Their first collection, A Refuge of Tales is out now from Renaissance Press. To find out more, reach out to them on Twitter @SamLynneS or for a complete bibliography visit them at scribbledshadows.wordpress.com.
Jesse Scoble is a Chief Narrative Designer at Tencent for Lightspeed Studios.
Previously, he was lead writer on HyperScape for Ubisoft, and contributed to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Far Cry 5, AC Origins, and Watch Dogs 2.
Before Ubisoft, he was lead writer on Wizard101 for several years.
He currently lives in Montreal and makes a mean mojito.
Craig Shackleton is an Ottawa-area writer and former game designer. His day job is researching and teaching historical swordplay.
Avi Silver is a speculative fiction author, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Augur Magazine, and poet. “Pluralities”, a trans slipstream-meets-space-opera novella, will be published by Atthis Arts in October 2023. In 2018, he co-founded The Shale Project, an award-winning indie arts collective through which he published the ongoing Sãoni Cycle (“Two Dark Moons”, “Three Seeking Stars”). Find his short fiction in “Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Anthology” and “Nothing Without Us Too”. Their poetry has been published in Strange Horizons and Uncanny Magazine, and received an honorable mention in the 2022 Rhysling Awards. They are currently working on their first full-length book of poetry, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Madona Skaff-Koren is the author of the Naya Investigates series, featuring a young woman disabled by multiple sclerosis, who turns sleuth to solve crimes. Her recent stand alone science fiction novel, Shifting Trust, is a thriller set 25 years in the future. She has several mystery and science fiction short stories to her credit. She has also self-published a science fiction novel, A Handful of Earths, for a friend (Sansoucy Kathenor) who has passed away. Book 2 will be available soon.
Su J Sokol is a social rights advocate and a writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Xe is the author of three novels: Cycling to Asylum, which was long-listed for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, Run J Run, and Zee, a finalist for the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Sokol’s short fiction and essays have appeared or are upcoming in various magazines and anthologies.
Mona Storm is a proud romantasy author who enjoys learning the many complexities of social media marketing on a non-existent budget. She started off on TikTok, growing her following to 1600+ since January 2023. With the fate of TikTok in jeopardy, she branched over to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as well.Mona’s debut novel Song of the Shadows has caught the attention of a few booktok reviewers, gaining reviews and sales through the free platform. Nightsong, a prequel novella, is garnering attention as well.Mona is a Professional Pet Groomer of 15yrs, specializing in exotics. Teaching is a passion of hers. With students in Canada and internationally in the Middle East, where the pet industry is still in its growing stages. Her work has allowed her to attend continuing education seminars with some of the top animal behaviour specialists in North America. Mona proudly competed Nationally and served as a demonstrator with Chris Christensen Systems. The many hours of continuing education about the client/pet bond gives her a unique perspective on how humans relate to animals and how we as writers can use that in our own fiction.
A.D.Sui is a Ukrainian-born, queer, and disabled science fiction writer. She is a failed academic with a Ph.D. in Health Promotion who nonetheless loves research. Her writing has appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Augur, and others. When not writing convoluted papers that nobody will ever read, she’s tweeting into the void as @TheSuiWay.
Hayden Trenholm is an award-winning editor, playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was formerly publisher and managing editor of Bundoran Press. His first novel, A Circle of Birds, won the 3-Day Novel Writing competition. His trilogy, The Steele Chronicles, were each nominated for an Aurora Award. Stealing Home, the third book, was a finalist for the Sunburst Award. Hayden has won five Aurora Awards – thrice for short fiction and twice for editing. In 2022 he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife and fellow writer, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, in Ottawa.
Sienna Tristen (they/them) is an author, poet, and literary organizer living in Treaty 3 territory who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. The first installment of their award-winning fantasy duology “The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming” came out from indie arts collective The Shale Project in 2018; the sequel released in October 2022. You can find their poetry in Augur Magazine and Plenitude, and their chapbook “hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart” is out with Frog Hollow Press.
D. G. Valdron is a Winnipeg based Aboriginal Rights lawyer and long time Speculative Fiction Writer. Best known for the fantasy/mystery novel The Mermaid’s Tale, and the alternate history novel, Axis of Andes. Other publications include Echelon, Giant Monsters Sing Sad Songs, There Are No Doors in Dark Places, Dawn of Cthulhu and nonfiction works including LEXX Unauthorized and A Pirate History of Doctor Who.
Leo Valiquette grew up in Eastern Ontario, but had become a regular tourist of Tatooine, Middle Earth, and that barn in Charlotte’s Web by the age of eight. He first trained to work in museums before taking up the pen as a journalist, newspaper editor, and then corporate business writer. This love of the fantastical and the historical, as well as finding the root of a story, fuel his need to create worlds of his own. His first (to be published) novel is a flintlock epic fantasy titled Bane of All Things—available now from American small press Inkshares. A cancer survivor, Valiquette has been contesting with metastatic melanoma since late 2019.
Maaja Wentz is an award-winning writer of quirky speculative fiction and mysteries.
“Inside of a Dog,” appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
“You,” won a short story prize in the national Norma Epstein Foundation competition for Creative Writing, University of Toronto.
Maaja’s first novel, Feeding Frenzy: Curse of the Necromancer, was serialized on Wattpad where it earned a Watty award.
Liz Westbrook-Trenholm is a retired educator and federal public servant who has published or aired non-fiction and mainstream and speculative short fiction on radio, in magazines and in anthologies, most recently in Seasons Among Us (Laksa Media), Over the Rainbow (Exile Press), Tesseracts 22 (Edge), Amazing Stories, Neo-Opsis and On Spec. She won the Prix Aurora Award for short fiction in 2018, had stories nominated three times since. She lives in Ottawa with her husband, retired policy advisor, writer, editor and inductee into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Hayden Trenholm.
Edward Willett is the award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, and a past Can-Con Guest of Honour. He won the Aurora Award for his second novel for DAW Books, MARSEGURO, in 2009, and has been shortlisted several times since, most recently in the Young Adult category for his novel STAR SONG (Shadowpaw Press). He’s now up to twelve novels with DAW; the most recent, THE TANGLED STARS, a humorous space opera featuring a talking cat who becomes a starship captain, came out last fall. He’s also written for DAW as E.C. Blake (the Masks of Aygrima fantasy trilogy) and Lee Arthur Chane (MAGEBANE). In 2018, Ed founded Shadowpaw Press, a small, traditional publisher which publishes both new work and reprints in a variety of genres, a member of both the Association of Canadian Publishers and Literary Press Group of Canada. This fall will see the release of three new science fiction titles, THE GOOD SOLDIER by Nir Yaniv, THE HEADMASTERS by Mark Morton, and Volume IV of the SHAPERS OF WORLDS anthologies, Kickstarted anthologies featuring authors (including international bestsellers and award-winners) who are guests of Ed’s Aurora Award-winning podcast, The Worldshapers, featuring interviews with other science fiction and fantasy authors about the creative process. In early 2024, Shadowpaw Press will published the last two unpublished novels by the late Dave Duncan, TRAITOR’S SON and CORRIDOR TO NIGHTMARE. Ed lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with his wife, a professional engineer. They have one daughter. In addition to writing, Ed is a professional actor and singer.
Eli K.P. William is a novelist and translator of Japanese literature. He is the author of the Jubilee Cycle trilogy, set in a cyber-dystopian future Tokyo. The series includes Cash Crash Jubilee, The Naked World, and A Diamond Dream. He also contributes book reviews and essays in both English and Japanese to such publications as Subaru, The Japan Times, and The Malahat Review, and has translated literature by some of Japan’s most renowned authors. His translations include Keiichiro Hirano’s bestselling novel A Man and various essays and short stories for Granta, Kyoto Journal, The Southern Review, and more. Born in Toronto, Canada, he has spent most of his adult life in Japan, and is the only member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan (SFWJ) who writes fiction in English.
Gregory A. Wilson is Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York, where he teaches creative writing and speculative fiction, and is the author of The Problem in the Middle: Liminal Space and the Court Masque (the second edition of which was recently published by Clemson UP) and a number of book chapters and journal articles. Outside academia he is the author of the epic fantasy The Third Sign, the award-winning graphic novel Icarus, the dark fantasies Grayshade and Renegade (with the final book in the Gray Assassin Trilogy, Heretic, forthcoming), and the D&D adventure/sourcebook Tales and Tomes from the Forbidden Library, plus a number of published short stories. He is one of the co-organizers of the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium, and along with Michael R. Underwood and Brandon O’Brien is co-host of the Speculate podcast, an actual play show now in its thirteenth year of production. Under the moniker Arvan Eleron, he runs a Twitch channel focused on story and narrative, with many sponsored TTRPG campaigns from companies like Free League, Cubicle 7, and Pegasus Spiele. Finally, he is the lead vocalist and trumpet player for the progressive rock band The Road, about to release its fourth album. He lives with his family in Connecticut; his virtual home is gregoryawilson.com.
With one foot in the world of technology and the other in the world of words, Colleen Winter’s fiction explores our relationship with technology and ultimately the choices it requires us to make. She is an electrical engineer and former journalist, and was short-listed for the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Speculative Fiction, has received two Writer’s Reserve grants from the Ontario Arts Council, won the Best First Sentence Contest at Thrillerfest, won first prize in the CAA Leacock/Simcoe Erotic prose contest, received a SLS Fellowship from the Unified Literary Contest, and is an alumni of the Humber School of Writers.
When she isn’t writing, Colleen can be found hiking or climbing the beautiful places of the world or sneaking out for early morning swims in whatever freshwater lake is nearby. She reads to get inspired by Martha Wells, Becky Chambers, Veronica Roth, Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, and Matt Haig. She is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, The Writers’ Union of Canada, and International Thriller Writers.
Colleen lives in Ontario with her husband Ron in their empty nest with their loveable, psychotic, reactive dog Kira.
Jamieson Wolf has been writing since a young age when he realized he could be writing instead of paying attention in school. Since then, he has created many worlds in which to live his fantasies and live out his dreams.
He is a number-one bestselling author—he likes to tell people that a lot—and writes in many different genres. Jamieson is also an accomplished artist and also an amateur photographer. He is also a Tarot reader.
He currently lives in Ottawa Ontario Canada with his husband Michael and their cat, Anakin who they swear has Jedi powers.
Learn more at www.jamiesonwolf.com
Tao Wong is a full-time author in the scifi and fantasy genres, writing often in the LitRPG and xianxia sub-genres. A multiple times international Amazon bestseller, he is best known for the System Apocalypse and A Thousand Li universes, with over 40 full-length novels published and numerous short stories. Tao was a finalist for the Kindle Storyteller UK Award in 2021.
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