September Festival: Stage C: Vibrant Voices of Ontario

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families through her initiative, Filipino Talks. After completing her master’s degree in Immigration and Settlement Studies, she graduated from the Humber School for Writers and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award and has been published in various anthologies. She lives in Toronto, ON, where she is writing her second novel.

Kristen den Hartog is a decorated novelist and non-fiction writer. Her books have won an Alberta Book Publishing Award and been nominated for both a Trillium Award and the City of Toronto Book Award.

Paul McLaughlin is a highly experienced and award-winning freelance writer, broadcaster and teacher. The author of 2022’s Asking the Best Questions, he has written numerous books, articles and playscripts. He lives in Toronto, where he teaches professional writing at York University.

Connie Gault has written for stage and radio and film. Her first novel, Euphoria, won a Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and was short-listed for the High Plains Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best Novel of Canada and the Caribbean. A Beauty won the 2016 Saskatchewan Book of the Year as well as the award for fiction, and was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A former prose editor of Grain magazine, Connie has also edited books of fiction and has taught many creative writing classes and mentored emerging writers. After spending most of her life in Saskatchewan, she now lives in London, Ontario.

Maurice Vellekoop was born in 1964 in a suburb of Toronto. A prolific artist and illustrator, he has worked non-stop for the last three decades. In addition to publications, his corporate clients include Swissair, Abercrombie & Fitch, Air Canada, Smart Car, and LVMH. He lives on Toronto Island with his partner Gordon Bowness.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for numerous awards. It has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. He is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing program where he held a Neal-Marshall Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong and Pelee Island where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.

Nina Dunic’s debut novel The Clarion won the 2024 Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and received “Best of 2023” nods from The Globe and Mail, Apple Books and the CBC. She is a two-time winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize four times, won third place in the Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, and was nominated for The Journey Prize. She has a collection of stories coming out in 2025. Nina lives in Scarborough.

Stuart Ross has published over 20 books of fiction, poetry, and personal essays, most recently the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. His poetry has been translated into Nynorsk, French, Spanish, Russian, Slovene, and Estonian. Active in the Canadian micropress world since the mid-1970s, Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, and blogs infrequently at bloggamooga.blogspot.ca.

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian author. Her debut novel River Mumma was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and has received starred reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma is an Amazon Books Editors’ Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy and was the October 2023 pick for the CityLine book club.Reid-Benta’s debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction in 2020. Frying Plantain was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium  Book Award, the White Pine Award and the Evergreen Award. Her picture book, Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas, will be published in 2025.

Born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Britta Badour, better known as Britta B. is an award-winning artist, public speaker, voice talent, and poet living in Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collection and audiobook, Wires that Sputter, published by McClelland & Stewart. Britta is a Trillium Book Award Finalist for Poetry and her work has been shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, as well as longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Britta holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph and teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College.

Catriona Wright is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her most recent poetry collection, Continuity Errors, was published by Coach House Books in 2023. She is also the author of the poetry collection Table Manners and the short story collection Difficult People. Her writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Grain, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Sanna Wani is a poet, editor and translator based in Toronto. She is the author of My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022), the winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She is the host of the podcast Poet Talk and a member of the Daybreak Poets Collective.

As a youngster, Aaron Badgley developed a profound love of The Beatles and music in general, also developing a fascination with record labels. At the age of 19, he started working in radio and by 20, he was a production manager for a number of stations in Canada. In 2005, Aaron debuted his syndicated radio show The Beatles Universe, which ran for six years. Currently, he is the host of Here Today and Backwards Traveller radio shows and cohosts From Memphis To Merseyside and The Way-Back Music Machine (with Tony Stuart). He writes for Spill Magazine and Immersive Audio Album, and has also contributed to the All Music Guide. Aaron resides in Toronto, Canada.

Deirdre Kelly is a Canadian journalist, author and internationally recognized arts critic and style writer. She holds a Master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto and is the best-selling author of the nonfiction books, Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, the latter taking the number one spot on a Top 10 list of the world’s best ballet books published by the Guardian newspaper in 2021. Her next book, Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World, will be published in the fall of 2023 by Sutherland House Books.

John Brower became a seminal figure in the Toronto music scene in 1963 when his high school rock band The Diplomats were amongst a small number of bands that reigned supreme on the Toronto circuit. His early concerts paved the way for rock promotion to become one of the country’s biggest exports as Live Nation and its progenitors benefited from Brower’s early milestone events. He was first to bring major rock artists to Canada on a weekly basis in Toronto. His club The Rockpile, a late 60’s venue following in the tradition of Bill Graham’s Fillmore held sway to everyone from The Who to Led Zeppelin and brought international stars to Toronto every week during the formative rock years. His first pop festival in June 1969 preceded Woodstock by several months. For his rock and roll revival in September of 69 he invited John Lennon who appeared unannounced with the Plastic Ono Band featuring Eric Clapton. Lennon’s appearance there is considered to be the impetus for his leaving The Beatles and striking out on his own. Wikipedia’s listing of the top 30 legendary music festivals lists five produced by Brower including; The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival 1969, where John Lennon made his break from The Beatles, The Strawberry Fields Festival, considered Canada’s Woodstock, and The Heatwave Festival, the landmark turning point in New Wave music that ushered in the 80’s. His life’s work has included poetry, creative writing, social activism and generosity of the human spirit. He is currently producing film and television properties based on his personal experiences in the music business. He lives in Venice California with an extended family that includes two dogs and three cats.

Kerry Clare is the author three novels Asking for a Friend (out now from Doubleday Canada), Waiting for a Star to Fall and Mitzi Bytes, and editor of The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood. A National Magazine Award-nominated essayist, and editor of Canadian books website 49thShelf.com, she writes about books and reading at her longtime blog, Pickle Me This. She lives in Toronto with her family.

Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and Full Frontal TO (nominated for the 2013 Toronto Book Award), a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing. Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and OCAD University and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project that has spread to over 20 cities globally. Shawn is the Toronto Public Library’s urban-focused Writer in Residence until December 2013.Explore the city with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.

Adam Bunch is an award-winning storyteller who brings the history of Toronto and Canada to life. He’s the author of The Toronto Book of the Dead and The Toronto Book of Love, the host of the Canadiana documentary series, and the creator of the Toronto History Weekly newsletter, the Festival of Bizarre Toronto History, and the Toronto Dreams Project. His work popularizing Canadian history was recognized with the Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media — the Pierre Berton Award. He also teaches history at George Brown College and has created writing workshops for the Toronto Public Library. He’s spoken at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, and his writing has appeared in The Toronto Star, Spacing Magazine and The Huffington Post. 

In a previous life, he was a music journalist: editor-in-chief of SoundProof Magazine and The Little Red Umbrella, a contributor to PopMatters and Sun Media’s 24 Hours commuter newspaper, and a member of the jury for the Polaris Music Prize. He also served as Creative Director for Ripple Creatives Strategies, developing marketing and communications for not-for-profit clients like the Gardiner Museum, Habitat For Humanity, Kids Help Phone, and the United Nations refugee agency.

He’s lived in Toronto since he was a few weeks old, growing up along the Humber River, raised on stories of snowstorms, jazz clubs and wartime romances.