Minelle Mahtani

Minelle Mahtani is a former radio host, associate television producer and is an Associate Professor at UBC. She has been nominated for two national magazine awards and won a gold medal in the Digital Publishing Awards for the piece that eventually became her memoir. She is of Muslim Iranian/Indian descent and previously taught at University of Toronto and worked at the CBC in national television news.

Arleen Paré

Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer with ten books of poetry, and an edited anthology. She has been short-listed for the BC Dorothy Livesay BC Award for Poetry and has won the American Golden Crown Award for Poetry, twice, the Victoria Butler Book Prize, a CBC Bookie Award, and a Governor Generals’ Award for Poetry, as well as the national bpnichols chapbook award. She lives in Victoria on the lands of the Coast Salish people with her wife, Chris Fox.

Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, was nominated for The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and has been published internationally. She’s the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Her novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted was published recently.