Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of Anatomical Venus, forthcoming in April from Radiant Press, House of Mystery (2016), and a chapbook titled Sea Foam (JackPine Press, 2013). She is also the co-editor of apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose (Saskatchewan Writers' Guild, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Grain, Vallum, PRISM, and EVENT, among others. She is queer and disabled, and one-third of a writing group called The Pain Poets.
Amber Cowie is a novelist living in a small town on the west coast of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Globe and Mail, Crime Reads, and Scary Mommy and has been endorsed by numerous bestsellers including Samantha M. Bailey, Shannon Kirk, Kerry Lonsdale, Catherine McKenzie, Robyn Harding, and Blake Crouch. Her first novel, Rapid Falls, was a Whistler Book Awards nominee, hit number one overall on Amazon, and was a top-100 bestselling Kindle book of 2018.
She is a mother of two and reader of many. She likes skiing, running and making up stories that make her internet search history unnerving.
Her next book, The Off Season, will be released by Simon and Schuster Canada on May 14, 2024.
David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020) and Dream of Me as Water (2022), both published under the Anstruther Books imprint of Palimpsest Press, and short-listed for the 2021 and 2023 ReLit Poetry Awards, respectively. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Ex-Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. David is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine.
C. L. Polk (they/them) wrote the Hugo-nominated Kingston Cycle, including the World Fantasy Award winning Witchmark, The Midnight Bargain, and Even Though I Knew The End. Before writing fantasy novels, they worked as a film extra, a costermonger, and also identified lepidoptera by eye. Mx. Polk lives in Calgary, on the territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3). Mx. Polk is represented by Caitlin McDonald of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Candace Savage is a writer, community organizer and grandmother based in Saskatoon. She is the author of more than two dozen books, including Prairie: a natural history of the heart of North America and A Geography of Blood: unearthing memory from a prairie landscape. Forthcoming projects include a picture book, Always Beginning: the big bang, the universe and you and a “middle reader,” How to Know a Crow: the biography of a brainy bird. In addition to her work as a writer, she helps lead Wild about Saskatoon and the Swale Watchers, serves on the national council of The Writers’ Union of Canada and plays accordion in the Saskatoon Fiddle Orchestra.
