David Chariandy
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David Chariandy grew up in Toronto and lives and teaches in Vancouver. His debut novel, Soucouyant, received stunning reviews and recognition from eleven literary award juries, including the Governor General's Literary Award shortlisting, a Gold Independent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and a Scotiabank Giller Price longlisting.
Brother, his second novel published in 2017, was nominated for nearly every major literary prize in Canada and published internationally. Brother won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Photo and description from sfu.com |
Terry Glavin
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Terry Glavin is an author, editor and journalist. Currently a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post, and a regular contributor to Macleans magazine, Terry is the author of seven books and the co-author of three. His assignments in recent years have taken him to Afghanistan, Israel, the Russian Far East, the Eastern Himalayas, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Geneva, China and Central America. His books have been published in Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. He has won more than a dozen literary and journalism awards, including the Hubert Evans Prize and several National Magazine Awards, and the B.C. Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.
From its inception in 1994 until 2009, Glavin was the editor of the Transmontanus series, published by New Star Books. He lives in Victoria, BC. |
Kim Fu
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Kim Fu is a Canadian-born writer, living in Seattle, Washington. .
Her first novel For Today I Am a Boy won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. It was also a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and long-listed for CBC’s Canada Reads. Fu's debut poetry collection How Festive the Ambulance received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and includes a 2017 National Magazine Awards Silver Medal winner and a Best Canadian Poetry 2016 selection. Her most recent novel, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, was published in February 2018. Fu’s writing has appeared in Granta, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Hazlitt, and the Times Literary Supplement. She has received residency fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, Berton House, Wildacres, and the Wallace Stegner Grant for the Arts. Photo by L D’Alessandro. |
Alix Hawley
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Alix Hawley studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Oxford University, the University of East Anglia, and the University of British Columbia. In 2008, she published a story collection, The Old Familiar (Thistledown Press), which was longlisted for the ReLit award. Several pieces have won accolades from the CBC: Witching won the 2017 Literary Awards Short Story Prize, while Tentcity and Jumbo were runners-up in 2012 and 2014, and Pig (For Oma) won the 2014 Bloodlines contest. Her first novel, All True Not a Lie in It, was published by Knopf as its New Face of Fiction pick for 2015, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the Amazon.ca / Walrus First Novel Award and BC Book Prize for Fiction. My Name is a Knife, her next novel, will be published in summer 2018.
Alix lives in British Columbia. Photo and description from alixhawley.com |
Mark Leiren-Young
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Mark Leiren-Young was recently swallowed by a whale named Moby Doll. His new book about Moby Doll: The Killer Whale Who Changed the World was released by Greystone in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation. His radio documentary for CBC’s Ideas Moby Doll: The Killer Whale that Changed the World received a 2014 Webster Award for “Best Radio Documentary.” He is in post-production on a feature documentary he’s writing and directing about Moby for Middle Child Films and a short documentary he’s writing and directing about Granny The Hundred Year Old Whale for BravoFactual. He was also a finalist for a National Magazine Award for Best Science, Technology & Environmental Writing for his feature on Moby Doll for The Walrus.
Mark is the author of two comic memoirs Free Magic Secrets Revealed (Harbour, 2013) and Never Shoot a Stampede Queen — A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo (Heritage), which won the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. His other books include The Green Chain: Nothing is Ever Clear Cut (Heritage), a collection of interviews dealing with the future of our forests and This Crazy Time (Knopf) written with/about controversial environmentalist Tzeporah Berman. Photo from straight.com and description from leiren-young.com |
Heather O'Neill
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Heather O’Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short-story writer, screenwriter and essayist. Lullabies for Little Criminals , her debut novel, was published in 2006 to international critical acclaim and won Canada Reads. It was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has since published the novel The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and the short story collection Daydreams of Angels , both of which were shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in consecutive years. The collection was also shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there today with her daughter.
Her latest novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, won the 2017 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Photo from twitter.com and description from writersfestival.org |
Renée Sarojini Saklikar
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Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle that includes poetry, fiction, and essays. Published work from the project appears in journals, anthologies, and newspapers, including, ti-TCR / a web folio (The Capilano Review), Literary Review of Canada, The Vancouver Review, Geist, Poetry is Dead, SubTerrain, Arc Poetry Magazine, Ryga, a journal of provocations, and many more. Her first completed book from thecanadaproject is Children of Air India, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) winner of the 2014 Canadian Authors Literary Award for poetry and a finalist for the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award.
Trained as a lawyer at the University of British Columbia, with a degree in English Literature, Renée was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1991. In 2010, Renée graduated from Simon Fraser University’s The Writers Studio and is currently a mentor and instructor for SFU’s writing and publishing program. She is also the co-founder of the poetry reading series Lunch Poems at SFU and is happy to have had served for two years as a national advocate for The Writer’s Union of Canada. Photo and description from thecanadaproject |
Bev Sellars
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Bev Sellars is a former councillor and chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, British Columbia. First elected chief of Xat’sull in 1987, a position she held from 1987-1993 and then from 2009-2015. She also worked as a community advisor for the BC Treaty Commission. Sellars served as the representative for the Secwepemc communities on the Cariboo Chilcotin Justice Inquiry in the early 1990s. She has spoken out on racism and residential schools and on the environmental and social threats of mineral resources exploitation in her region.
Sellars is the author of They Called Me Number One, a memoir of her childhood experience in the Indian residential school system and its effects on three generations of women in her family, published in 2013 by Talonbooks. The book won the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness, was shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature. Her book, Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival, published in 2016 by Talonbooks, looks at the history of Indigenous rights in Canada from an Indigenous perspective. Sellars has a degree in history from the University of Victoria and a law degree from the University of British Columbia. She is currently Chair of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining (FNWARM). |
Grant Lawrence
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Grant Lawrence is an award-winning author, CBC personality, singer, columnist, and live event host.
His new book, Dirty Windshields, is his third. His previous books are Adventures In Solitude (Harbour Publishing, 2010) and The Lonely End of the Rink (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013). At the CBC, Grant is known mostly for his work with the groundbreaking Radio 3 and the championing of Canadian independent music. Previously, he worked as an indie label publicist and concert promoter. Grant is the lead singer of the Smugglers and the goalie for the Flying Vees beer league hockey team. He is married to musician Jill Barber and they live in Vancouver, BC, with their two children. Grant is returning for his second year as our Master of Ceremonies, after joining us as a guest author for the 2016 festival. For more about Grant Lawrence, see his author profile from our 2016 festival. Photo and description from grantlawrence.ca |
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. |