Events

Desiree Mckenzie is an award-winning poet, arts educator, poetry slam champion, and voice actor living in Toronto. Her poetry and voice have been featured in works for CBC, Clearco, Button Poetry, Kids Help Phone and Home Depot. In December 2022, she opened for Rupi Kaur on her world tour stop at Massey Hall. She is currently an MFA candidate in the University of Guelph Creative Writing program and working on her first book of poetry.

Gianna Patriarca is a multiple award winner of 13 books. Her poetry, fiction and children’s literature is extensively anthologized, adapted for Canada stage, CBC radio drama and appears in numerous documentaries. Italian Women and Other Tragedies is in its fourth printing and translated into Italian. This Way Home, published by Guernica Editions in 2022, is her latest collected and new work.

In the great tradition of spoken word, performance poets and singer-songwriters, Joseph Maviglia is renowned for his energized musical performances, written text and non-fiction essays.Joseph lives in Toronto. His most recent collection is ‘In a Cage of Sunlight’ (The Selected Works of Joseph Maviglia) (Guernica Editions 2025).

Toronto’s seventh poet laureate, Lillian Allen is an acclaimed foremother of Canadian Poetry. She received an Honourary Doctor of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University for her significant contribution and impact on Canadian literature.A poet, writer/performer, and a long-time arts activist, she is a leading international exponent of dub poetry with its politically charged reggae-infused aesthetic of resistance and poetic calls for justice, peace, joy, pleasure and revolution. Lillian has also been a successful Cultural Strategist, advising three levels of government and played a key role in transforming the Toronto and Canadian cultural landscapes. A mentor to the mentors for individuals and groups across many cultures, she brings her critical and effective equity and community building strategies to institution such as OCAD University. A creative writing professor at OCAD University, she initiated and led the development of a BFA in Creative Writing Program that acknowledges community connected writing, traditional, non-traditional and new writing forms.Over the decades, she created opportunities for new generations of artists and initiated and led community-building youth-supporting arts programs such as Fresh Elements and Fresh Arts. She has received numerous accolades, citations and awards, and is the recipient of The Toronto Cultural Champions Award, The Margo Bindhardt Award for significantly impacting the arts in Toronto through both creative work and activism, the William P. Hubbard Award for Race. She is the recipient of the Writer’s Trust Margaret Laurence Lecture Award, 2020/ and a recipient of the Gustafson Distinguished Poet award 2021.Lillian’s newest collection is Make the World New- selected works, old & new, edited by Ronald Cummings, WLU Press 2021, other books include Women Do this Every Day, Psychic Unrest, plus books and recordings for children and young people. Also, a globally recognized recording artist, Ms. Allen is a two-time Canadian Juno award winner for her recordings Conditions Critical, and for Revolutionary Tea Party which was recently nominated for the prestigious Polaris Heritage Prize in Canada.

Subrata Kumar Das, a writer and curator, immigrated to Canada from Bangladesh in 2013. A recipient of Nalanda Best Canadian Bengali Author Award in 2023, and Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award in 2018, Subrata has 31 books to his credit and a record of joining the TIFA for three years.

KAREN KROSSING is an author of settler heritage who has written many books for kids and teens, including the picture books My Street Remembers and One Tiny Bubble, and the novels Monster vs. Boy and Punch Like a Girl. She has twice won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award and has been a finalist for the Ontario Library Association White Pine Award, among other honors. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she’s on faculty at Whale Rock Literary Workshops and Humber School for Writers. Karen lives on the land currently known as Toronto, Canada.

WILLIE POLL is a Métis author, activist, storyteller, and lifelong learner. She is from Sault Ste. Marie, ON and now resides in Prince Edward Island.

DAVID A. ROBERTSON is the author of numerous books for young readers including Governor General’s Literary Award winners On the Trapline and When We Were Alone. The Barren Grounds, Book 1 of The Misewa Saga series, was a Kirkus, NPR, and Quill & Quire best middle-grade book of 2020, as well as a USBBY and Texas Lone Star selection. Winner of the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Freedom to Read Award, as well as the 2021 Globe and Mail Children’s Storyteller of the Year recipient, Dave is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and currently lives in Winnipeg, Canada.

Sasha and Sarena Nanua are twin sisters who love stories about friendship, ghosts, and all things magical. Born on Diwali ten minutes apart, they began writing books together at the age of nine. They are graduates of the English and professional writing programs at the University of Toronto and are the authors of Spirit Service, Sisters of the Snake, and Daughters of the Dawn. You can visit them online at SarenaSashaBooks.com.

A. GREGORY (GREG) FRANKSON is a Toronto-based educator, consultant, public speaker, and award-winning literary artist. He edited and contributed to the critically acclaimed AfriCANthology: Perspectives of Black Canadian Poets, appears in six anthologies, and published four poetry collections. He was previously the poet laureate of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership and resident poet on CBC Radio One’s Here and Now Toronto. His writings have appeared in numerous literary, digital, and journalistic publications. Greg’s debut full-length work of creative nonfiction, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters, was released by Dundurn Press in January 2025.

Adnan Khan is a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. He has won a National Magazine Award and the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer prize, and his debut novel, There Has to Be a Knife, was named a best Canadian novel of 2019 by the CBC. His debut feature film, Shook, made its premier at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.

Katie Underwood is an award-winning journalist and the current managing editor at Maclean’s magazine. Previously, she held editorial positions at Chatelaine and The Grid, and her byline has appeared in such fine publications as The Walrus, Toronto Life, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She just got into audiobooks.

MATTEO L. CERILLI is a transmasc author and an activist. He helped found Students for Queer Liberation (Toronto) and works with the No Pride in Policing Coalition. Cerilli writes widely across genres and age categories. Lockjaw is his debut book. Something’s Up with Arlo is his first novel for middle-grade readers.

Damian Tarnopolsky is the author of Lanzmann and Other Stories, Goya’s Dog, and The Defence. His work has been nominated for many awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, and the Journey Prize, and he won the Voaden Prize for Playwriting in 2019. He teaches at the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab at the University of Toronto.

Elizabeth Ruth is the author of the novels, Semi-Detached, Matadora, Smoke, and Ten Good Seconds of Silence. Her work has been recognized by the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and One Book One Community. Ruth is also the editor of the anthology, Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales. She holds a BA in English Literature, an MA in Counselling Psychology, and an MFA in Creative Writing. Elizabeth Ruth teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto. This Report Is Strictly Confidential is her debut poetry collection.

Ronna Bloom is a Toronto-based poet and educator and the author of seven books of poetry. Her work has been broad- cast on CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, translated into Bangla and Chinese, and appeared three times in Best Canadian Poetry. Ronna is also someone who puts poetry to work in the world; she has led initiatives to bring poetry into health care settings, specifically developing the first Poet-in-Residence program at Mount Sinai Hospital/ Sinai Health.

Amal El-Mohtar writes fiction, poetry, and criticism. She won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” and again for her novella This Is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which also won the BSFA and Aurora awards, became a New York Times bestseller, and has been translated into over ten languages. Her reviews and articles have appeared in the NYT and on NPR Books. Her solo debut, The River Has Roots, is out now from Tordotcom Publishing. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. Online at: amalelmohtar.com.

Ryad Assani-Razaki (born November 4, 1981) is a Beninese-Canadian writer. His debut short story collection Deux cercles won the Trillium Book Award for French-language fiction in 2010, and his novel La main d’Iman won the Prix Robert-Cliche in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction in 2012.Born in Cotonou, Benin, Assani-Razaki first moved to North America in 1999, to study computer science at the University of North Carolina. After graduating in 2002, he struggled to find a job until registering for a master’s in computer science at the Université de Montréal in 2004. He wrote his first short story in 2006, after witnessing an Asian man struggle to order food in a fast food restaurant because of his difficulties with the language. Deux cercles was published in 2009.

Sara Flemington is the author of the novels Egg Island and R.I.P. Scoot. Her work has appeared in Eclectica, subTerrain, The Feathertale Review, The Humber Literary Review, and Paper Darts, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Guelph at Humber MFA, and lives in Toronto.

Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Uncanny, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize, and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese is an editor at Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal, and co-Director of AugurCon, Augur’s speculative literature conference. She is the author of Myth, a poetry collection, and the editor of As the Earth Dreams, an anthology of Black Canadian speculative fiction. Terese lives and works in Toronto, Canada.