Featured Lineup

Linwood Barclay is a New York Times #1 internationally bestselling author of twenty novels for adults, including No Time for Goodbye, Trust Your Eyes, A Noise Downstairs, and most recently, Whistle. He has also written two novels for children and screenplays. He spent three decades in newspapers before turning full time to writing thrillers. His books have been translated into more than two dozen languages, sold millions of copies, and he counts Stephen King among his fans. Many of his books have been optioned for film and TV – his 2011 thriller, The Accident, has been turned into the six-part television series L’Accident in France, and he adapted his novel Never Saw It Coming for the movie, directed by Gail Harvey and starring Eric Roberts and Emily Hampshire. Several of his other books either have been, or still are, in development for TV and film, including the Promise Falls trilogy. After spending his formative years helping run a cottage resort and trailer park after his father died when he was 16, Barclay got his first newspaper job at the Peterborough Examiner, a small Ontario daily. In 1981, he joined the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper. He held such positions as assistant city editor, chief copy editor, news editor, and Life section editor, before becoming the paper’s humour columnist in 1993. He was one of the paper’s most popular columnists before retiring from the position in 2006 to work exclusively on books. Born in the US, his parents moved to Canada just as he was turning four, and he’s lived there ever since. He lives near Toronto with his wife, Neetha. They have two grown children.

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 34 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was longlisted for Canada Reads. His last novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was the Hamilton Reads choice for 2023-2024. His last poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures also won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His most recent novel, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead will be published by Book*Hug in 2026. Muttertongue: what is a word in utter space, a music and text work (with Lillian Allen and Greg Betts) was recently released as a book and a recording. His art and media works have been exhibited and presented internationally.  He lives in Hamilton. For more, check out his website at garybarwin.com. 

Award-winning writer and comedian Carolyn Bennett has written for television, film, radio, theatre, web, and inanimate objects in her office. In 2020 she managed to have a Toronto Lit Up book launch for her debut novel, Please Stand By (NON Publishing, Vancouver) before Covid ruined everything. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Canadian Notes and Queries, The Quarantine Review, The Prairie Journal of Canadian Fiction, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Canadian Immigrant Magazine and The Montreal Gazette. She's a contributing writer/columnist with the Brockville-based arts and entertainment monthly, The Fishwrapper, and produces and hosts the literary reading series Bright Lit Big City in Toronto. Bennett will be featured in the Write 'Em Up comedy show at the Brockville Arts Centre on Saturday, September 6, at 7:30pm. For more, check out her website at www.carolynbennettwritercomic.com.

Don Butler had a long career as a journalist at the Ottawa Citizen, where he worked in a variety of roles, including executive editor. He lives in Ottawa and is married to journalist Christina Spencer. His first novel, a travel mystery called A Life of Bliss, was released in 2021. Norman’s Conquest, a murder mystery released in May 2024, includes many characters from his first book. He’s already working on a third mystery in the series.

Rod Carley is the award-winning author of 4 works of humorous literary fiction – RUFF (long listed for the 2025 Leacock Medal for Humour + winner of the 2025 Silver Medal for Best European Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards), GRIN REAPING (long listed for the 2023 Leacock Medal for Humour + 2022 Bronze Winner for Humour from Foreword Review INDIES + Finalist for the 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Humor/Comedy, & long listed for the ReLit Group Awards for Best Short Fiction of 2023), KINMOUNT (long listed for the 2021 Leacock Medal for Humour + winner of the 2021 Silver Medal for Best Regional Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards) and A Matter of Will (finalist for the 2018 Northern Lit Award for Fiction).

 His short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in a variety of literary magazines including Broadview, Cloud Lake Literary, Blank Spaces, Exile, HighGrader, and the anthology 150 Years Up North and More. He was a finalist for the 2021 Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Prize. Rod is a popular author and moderator at literary festivals and events, including, most recently, the Toronto Arts and Letters Club, the Literary Press Group of Canada, NOWW WritFest in Thunder Bay, and the Book Drunkard Festival. In the spring of 2025, he was Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library. For more, visit his website at rodcarley.ca.

Brenda Chapman is an Ottawa crime fiction author with twenty-five published novels. In addition to short stories and standalones, she has written the lauded Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series, the Anna Sweet mystery novellas, and the Jennifer Bannon mysteries for middle grade. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards including five Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. She is currently writing a new mystery series set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate mysteries, and the fourth book in the series, Who Lies in Wait was released May 1, 2025.

Brenda studied English literature at Lakehead and Carleton universities and earned a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University. She taught for fifteen years in the field of special education followed by a Communications career in the federal government. She currently writes full-time and makes her home in Ottawa. 

A graduate of the Humber School for Writers program, Ottawa author John Delacourt has had his short fiction and reviews published in a number of publications in Canada and the US, including The New Quarterly, The Danforth Review, The Literary Review of Canada, The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Life Magazine and The Ottawa Review of Books. In 2022 a short story of his, “Liner Notes,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. About his recent novel The Black State, the reviewer with The Miramichi Reader said, “The Black State by John Delacourt is a multi-layered novel written in lyrical prose that is shocking in its insight regarding the world of international diplomacy ... there is a Shakespearean quality to the way in which Delacourt illustrates the differences between appearance and reality ... Delacourt has written a complex book replete with richly-developed characters who inhabit a narrative that will haunt readers with tense plausibility about the world of international diplomacy. Highly recommended.” Butterfly, the political thriller that preceded it, was long listed as one of the best novels of 2019 here in Canada by The Miramichi Reader and was reviewed in The Globe and Mail and by the CBC.

A two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, Terry Fallis is the award-winning author of nine national best sellers, six of them #1 bestsellers, including his latest, A New Season. His debut novel, The Best Laid Plans, won the 2008 Leacock Medal, the 2011 edition of CBC Canada Reads, and was adapted as a six-part television miniseries, as well as a stage musical. He won the Leacock Medal a second time in 2015 for No Relation. His tenth novel, The Marionette, hits bookstores in October 2025.  Terry has written for Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and The Toronto Star. He also teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released with Radiant Press in April 2023. Hollay's short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, came with Gordon Hill Press in 2024. Her debut novel, The Unravelling of Ou, is coming out with Palimpsest Press in early 2026. Hollay is a board member of the League of Canadian Poets, the co-chair of the League's BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of the region in which she lives, and a Poetry, Canadian Studies, and Literature podcast host on The New Books Network. Hollay is also a host of HOWL—the literary arts show—on 89.5 CIUT FM, a member of The Writers Union of Canada, the Creative Nonfiction Collective, and the National Book Critics Circle.

Ali Hassan is a comedian, actor, author and broadcaster who has performed for audiences across Canada, in the United States and internationally.  Ali is the host of the hit stand-up comedy radio show Laugh Out Loud, which airs on CBC Radio and SiriusXM, and for the past eight years, he has been the host of Canada Reads, CBC's "Battle of the Books." Ali has appeared on the big screen in award-winning films such as French Immersion, the hockey hit Goon and Tammy's Always Dying.  Some of his recent television roles include Designated Survivor (ABC, Netflix), Odd Squad (PBS Kids, CBBC), Dino Dana (TVOKids), Workin’ Moms (Netflix), Murdoch Mysteries (CBC), Hudson & Rex (CityTV) and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+). Ali was recently nominated for Canadian Screen Awards for his roles in two shows currently on television – Run The Burbs (CBC, Hulu), and the Peabody-Award winning Sort Of  (CBC Gem, HBO Max). Ali has performed at the Just For Laughs festivals in Montreal and Toronto. He has also toured across Canada as one of the stars of Just For Laughs ‘Comedy Night In Canada’ tour. A Canadian Screen Award and Canadian Comedy Award nominee, Ali has toured his solo show Muslim Interrupted around Canada to great acclaim. He has taken the show to Scotland to perform at the world's largest comedy festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  Recently, Ali began touring his latest one man show, based on his decade in the food industry, Does This Taste Funny?  In 2024, he performed as part of NPR’s The Moth storytelling series in Cincinnati and will rejoin the series again in Chicago in December.  His comedic memoir ‘Is There Bacon in Heaven?’ was released in 2022 with Simon & Schuster and was described by Rick Mercer as “perhaps the funniest and most heartfelt Canadian memoir yet.” 

Widely acclaimed for his magical weaving of fact and fiction, his masterful plotting and his gift for both description and character, Wayne Johnston's many novels include The Custodian of Paradise, The Navigator of New York and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, which was a finalist for sixteen Canadian and international awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and which won the New York Public Libraries Prize for Best Novel and was chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Ten Best Books of the year. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoir about his father and grandfather, won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for literary nonfiction. Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. After a brief stint in pre-Med, Wayne obtained a BA in English from Memorial University. He worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, published when he was just 27 years old, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for the best first novel published in the English language in Canada in that year. Subsequent books consistently received critical praise and increasing public attention. The Divine Ryans was adapted to the silver screen in a production starring Academy Award winner Pete Postlethwaite - Wayne wrote the screenplay.  Other books include The Mystery of Right and Wrong, First Snow, Last Light, and The Son of a Certain Woman. His recent memoir, Jennie’s Boy, won the 2023 Leacock Medal for Humour and was a finalist on CBC Radio’s 2025 Canada Reads.

Editor, creative writing instructor, and bestselling novelist Amy Jones is the author of Pebble & Dove (M&S 2023), Every Little Piece of Me (M&S, 2019), and We’re All in This Together (M&S, 2016), which won the Northern Lit Award, was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour, and was adapted into a feature film in 2021. Her debut short fiction collection, What Boys Like (Bibiloasis, 2009), won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award. Amy has also taught creative writing for many years and is currently a mentor in the Flying Books Mentorship Program. Originally from Halifax, she currently lives in Hamilton.

Lois Lorimer is a poet, actor and teacher. She trained as an actor at The National Theatre School of Canada and holds degrees from Queen’s University and University of Toronto. Her poems appear in journals including Arc, Literary Review of Canada, Juniper as well as many Canadian anthologies. Recently, her work appeared in an American anthology, The Wonder of Small Things (Story Publishing). Her published chapbooks include Between the Houses and Last Fall Showing. Lois’s collection, Stripmall Subversive, was published by Variety Crossing Press. A member of the League of Canadian Poets, she is thrilled to moderate The Poetry Panel and welcome poets to the St. Lawrence Writers Festival!

Randall Perry is a writer and editor living in Toronto, Ontario. He is currently consulting editor at Latitude 46 Publishing, served as administrative judge and anthology editor for the final three years of the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Competition (CVC—volumes eight through ten published by Exile Editions), and has moderated publishing industry panels at both Wordstock Sudbury Literary Festival and Librissimi Toronto Italian Book Festival. He served for a few years as fiction advisor/editor for Exile Literary Quarterly and edited several books published by Exile Editions, Latitude 46 Publishing, and Guernica Editions. He co-edited the bestselling Ken Reid’s Hometown Hockey Heroes, published in 2023 by Simon & Schuster Canada. His fiction has appeared in Islandside and On the Run magazines, and in the anthologies Fear from a Small Place and Storgy 2019. His non-fiction essays, columns, and reviews have appeared in Wayves, The ARC Quarterly, Outlooks, and fab.

Called “terrific,” by the New York Times, "imaginative, intelligent, and strangely mesmerizing,” by the San Diego Union Tribune, and “enchanting” by the Twin Cities’ Pioneer Press, Phina Pipia has performed throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States, most recently on tour with her award-winning illusion, music, puppetry, and theatre show, Ha Ha Da Vinci, which will embark on its first multi-city tour of Italian theatres this fall. With a BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, Phina went on to work as a dancer in New York City and was a key part of the development of Julian Barnett’s Super Natural, a co-production of the Joyce Theater and the New York State Council on the Arts. She toured with her sister in the double sousaphone duo, The Pipia Sisters and with her father in the father-daughter illusion show, The Psychic Dynasty. She is a tuba player with the Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra, with jazz ensemble The Unexpected Brass Band, and is a regular invited artist at the world’s largest comedy-varieté festival, The Moisture Festival. Her solo album, Outside of the Movies, was released in 2020. 

Barbara Radecki is a Toronto-based author and screenwriter. Her debut novel The Darkhouse was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and various works have been highlighted on reading lists from CBC to Forest of Reading, as well as being awarded grants from Canada Council for the Arts and Toronto Arts Council, development funding from Telefilm Canada, and a residency with Vermont Studio Center. Barbara has written several screenplays, including Modern Persuasion, a film starring Alicia Witt and Bebe Neuwirth. Before transitioning to writing, Barbara was an established actor with dozens of film and TV show credits, including the original English dub of Sailor Neptune in the popular Sailor Moon series. Her acting background was invaluable during her narration of her audiobooks. Barbara has participated on numerous literary panels across Canada and enjoys lively discussions around storytelling.

Heidi Reimer is a novelist, a writing coach with Sarah Selecky Writing School, and the creator of the conscious group coaching program Novel Alchemy. Her debut novel, The Mother Act, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a spot on best books lists from People Magazine and Chatelaine. Molly Fast-Jong wrote in the New York Times Book Review that The Mother Act “offers an ultimately hopeful vision of what it means to be connected in this world.” Heidi has published in The New Quarterly, Chatelaine, LitHub, Literary Mama, and the anthologies The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood and Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers. She is from Northern Ontario and now lives and writes in Prescott. For more, visit her website at heidireimer.com.

Stuart Ross has been working in the small press trenches of Canadian writing for 50 years. He has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the 2023 Trillium Book Award–winning memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. He has received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, as well as the 2018 Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, Slovenian, Nynorsk, and Estonian. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Dennis Stein lives in Brockville, Ontario, a small city nestled on the St. Lawrence River on the edge of the Thousand Islands. He took up writing as a hobby in his late 30's, writing historical and human-interest articles for local publications. The Magic Cat became reality when his wife asked him to write a short story for her. The family pet, who has a unique bond with Pamela, his wife, was the logical choice... Stein works a day job for PNR Railworks, writing in his spare time. Stein prefers adventure stories, but has dabbled with a wide variety of genres, including horror and romance. When asked to reflect on his collection of works, he states simply: "Sometimes a good story idea comes to me, and I explore it fully. Maybe I will stick with it, or I will become engaged in something else after I hit a dead end." Many of the characters in his self-published works are people he knows very well. His Children are the stars of Heart of the Raven and The Lost Channel, adventure stories set in his hometown and rooted in local legend or history. He is working on a third book in that series, which should be finished soon, called The Last Train.

Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of The Marigold, a finalist for the Aurora Awards, the Locus Awards, and the Hamilton Literary Awards, and named a Best Book of the Year by Esquire, The Verge, Book Riot and the Winnipeg Free Press. He cowrote The Handyman Method with Nick Cutter, a novel about home improvement gone wrong. Sullivan is also the author of the novel WASTE, a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year, and the short story collection All We Want is Everything, a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year and finalist for the ReLit Award. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, author, filmmaker and journalist. Born and living on the Curve Lake First Nation, Drew had done everything from performing stand up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to serving as Artistic Director of Canada's premiere Indigenous theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. Proud recipient of 3 Doctorates (Hon), his 36th play has just been released by Talon Books, OPEN HOUSE, and is currently working on a new novel. 

Rene F Tyo is an author of horror stories and an aspiring novelist. He is a jack-of-all-trades by nature, having used his varied background in everything from business, marketing and entrepreneurship to manufacturing and hard labour as inspiration for much of his writing, as there is no more thorough research than ingrained personal experience. He lives in Brockville, Ontario, is married with two sons, and has had one or more dogs by his side for most of his life (along with the occasional cat). He has published two short story collections: The Hostage Chronicles, and The Manhattan High-rise Horrors. The second installment continues an overarching storyline presented in the first book. His creepy tale, Gumballs was shortlisted for DarkWinter Literary Magazine’s 2nd Annual Short Story Contest. Rene is also working on his first novel (yet untitled): a tale about a small city besieged by evil forces, both man-made and otherwise.

Born and raised in Brockville and a graduate of BCI, Paul is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and performer whose work has been produced across Canada and around the world. Paul holds a BAH in Stage and Screen Studies from Queen's University as well as a Masters in Creative Writing from UBC, and he recently taught playwriting at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Paul’s work has received numerous awards including The Tom Hendry Playwrights Guild of Canada Comedy Award, The Montreal English Critics Circle Revelation Award, and The Montreal English Theatre Awards Outstanding Direction. Paul is a past participant of the Intern Directors Project at the Shaw Festival, a past National Forum Representative of Quebec for the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and the founding Artistic Director of Rabbit in a Hat Productions; a Montreal based theatre company with a mandate to produce new Canadian plays. As an actor, Paul has appeared in dozens of plays, films, and TV shows, and has voiced numerous characters for video games and animation, most recently Unicorn Academy on Netflix and SuperKlaus with Colm Feore.

Brent van Staalduinen is the award-winning and bestselling author of the novels Unthinkable, Nothing But Life, and Boy, and the forthcoming novels The Peace Thieves and Do Not Count the Days. His stories have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and have won the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Fiddlehead Best Fiction Award, the Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and numerous other accolades. He lives, writes, and teaches in Hamilton. For more information about Brent and his writing, visit www.brentvans.com and follow him on social media (@brentvans).

Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies, including Queer Little Nightmares and Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food. She is also the host of Lit Live, Hamilton's monthly reading series, and the Fiction Editor at the Ex-Puritan Magazine. In 2023, her short story collection, titled CHRYSALIS, won the Writers Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and in 2024, it was shortlisted for the The Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel, A KISS OF CRIMSON ASH, the first in a new fantasy trilogy inspired by medieval India, is forthcoming in spring 2026. Anuja lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner, two kids, and two cats.

Heidi von Palleske is a Canadian actor and writer whose voice resonates across page, stage, and screen. Her upcoming novel, The Lost Queen (February 2026) is the anticipated second book in The Glass Eye Trilogy, following the breakout success of Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack—a LOANSTARS Top 10 Pick and finalist for the Foreword Review’s Best Literary Novel in North America (2021). The novel has since been optioned for a limited series by Oscar-winning producer Frederic Bohbot and Bunbury Films. Her earlier work includes They Don’t Run Red Trains Anymore, winner of the HR Percy Award for Best Novel Manuscript in Eastern Canada, and the provocative poetry collection Erato: The Sex Sonnets. Her story in Russell Smith’s anthology Secret Sex remains, well, a secret. She also adapted Lesley Crewe’s beloved novel Hit & Mrs. into a screenplay for Lady Hammond Productions and Simple Films in Nova Scotia, with production slated for 2026. As an actor, von Palleske is known for her fearless performances. She broke out in David Cronenberg’s iconic Dead Ringers, launching a film career rich with complex, layered roles. Recent performances include Patti, an alcoholic mother of werewolves, in the indie sensation My Animal, and Ada, a late 19th-century Irish madame, in Bordello. She recently wrapped Body in the Trunk, yet another bold and demanding role in her growing filmography. Her obsessions? Greek mythology and classical poetry - specifically the sonnet - which she came to honestly with her love of Shakespeare. She’s written nearly 475 sonnets to date and is closing in on a Guinness World Record.

Emily A Weedon is a screenwriter, novelist, creator, coproducer and recovering performing and recording musician who is comfortable writing across mediums and forms from long form drama and romantic comedy, to dark, dystopian literary dramatic prose, satirizing and/or riffing in animated adult comedy. She is the author of the Autokrator, with Cormorant Books, 2023, and the co-creator of 2 seasons of the period drama web series Chateau Laurier about a hotel in Ottawa for which she won the 2023 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing.  She is the proud writer of 4 animated Red Ketchup Episodes for Corus. Her new horror novel HEMO Sapiens (a rethink of the vampire myth) is being published by Dundurn Press this coming fall. Emily spent almost 30 years in the Art Department where she was constantly pitching ideas and discovered that's a liability in Art Dept, but a great skill in the writer's room. She plans to keep writing for a living because she simply cannot make enough money tap dancing for cat food. (mostly because she is the first person ever to be failed in tap dance class) Please buy her forthcoming book or consider buying her old tap shoes.

For 25 years, Maggie Wheeler has reigned as the Seaway Valley’s Queen of Crime. Her popular Farran Mackenzie Lost Villages mysteries explore the mammoth construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project of the 1950s—and its equally mammoth fallout on landscape, economy, community, shared history, and human story. As writer and analyst of the human experience, Maggie is host of the podcast Mapping the New Midlife, exploring and mapping the new realities of our increasing longevity: the arrival of a new full season of living called Later Adulthood, and the consequent challenges and opportunities this brings to midlife living and planning. Media coverage of Maggie and her work has included CBC Ontario Morning, The Montreal Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen, and The National Post. Her mystery series has garnered multiple awards, including a nomination for the Ontario Premier’s Awards for the Arts, an Ontario Provincial Hansard, and the FACES Magazine Ottawa’s Favourite Female Author award in 2017. Maggie holds a Masters in English and a Bachelor of Education in English and history. She is also a national historian as contributor to Historica Canada’s The Canadian Encyclopedia—the official national online resource for all things Canadiana. The mother of three grown daughters, Maggie calls Brockville—The River City—home. Although a seasoned planner of murders, Maggie does not take contract work.

Ronald Zajac has been reporting on the arts (and more) in Brockville since he first started at The Recorder and Times nearly thirty years ago. In his other life, he writes fiction. His short stories have appeared in Matrix, Blank Spaces, The New Quarterly and the short fiction anthologies The Things We Leave Behind (Chicken House Press, 2022) and Will There Be A Sunset? (Chicken House Press, 2024). Another of his short stories is due for publication in an anthology slated for the near future. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first novel, while working on his second in a series. He has a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from McGill University, and a Diploma in Journalism from Concordia University.

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning Canadian screenwriter and director for more than three decades. After winning an international novel contest, she began writing mystery thrillers. Her debut, Dark August, was an instant bestseller, NYT Book Review Editor’s Choice, Apple Book of the Month, and made the Globe 100 list. Since that time, Katie has written two more novels in the critically acclaimed Gus Monet trilogy, including Poison Lilies and Buried Road. Katie lives in Ottawa with her husband.