Introducing our 2025 Writers
ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels: The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, and Tom Lake. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories 2006 and has written four books of nonfiction: Truth & Beauty (about her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy), What Now? (an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College), This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (a collection of essays on commitment), and These Precious Days (essays on home, family, friendship, and writing). She has also collaborated with illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser on three children’s books: Lambslide, Escape Goat, and The Verts. Most recently, she released an annotated version of Bel Canto.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Patchett has received numerous awards, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her books have been both New York Times Notable Books and bestsellers, translated into more than thirty languages.
In 2011, she opened Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, with her business partner Karen Hayes. Since then, she has become a champion for independent booksellers, advocating for books and bookstores on NPR, The Colbert Report (including the series finale), Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, The Martha Stewart Show, and The CBS Early Show. Along with James Patterson, she served as the honorary chair of World Book Night. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Ann Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender, and their dog, Nemo.
Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Night Boat to Tangier, Beatlebone, and City of Bohane, as well as three short story collections, including That Old Country Music. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter and lives in County Sligo, Ireland.
Linden MacIntyre
Linden MacIntyre’s bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award, and his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Award. His second novel, The Bishop’s Man, was a #1 national bestseller and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award, and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, among other honors. The third book in his loose-knit trilogy, Why Men Lie, was also a #1 bestseller and a Globe and Mail “Can’t Miss” Book. His novels Punishment and The Only Café were also national bestsellers, as was his 2019 work of nonfiction, The Wake.
A distinguished broadcast journalist, MacIntyre was born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and grew up in Port Hastings, Cape Breton. He spent twenty-four years as the co-host of The Fifth Estate and has won ten Gemini Awards for his work. MacIntyre lives in Toronto with his wife, CBC radio host and author Carol Off. They spend their summers in a Cape Breton village by the sea.
Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, Alligator; the story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and the young-adult novel Flannery. Her books have won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads, been finalists for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Lisa is also the co-librettist, along with Laura Kaminsky, of the opera February, based on her novel of the same name (2023). She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
KatherEna Vermette
Katherena Vermette (she/her/hers) is a Michif (Red River Métis) writer from Treaty 1 territory, the heart of the Métis Nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Born in Winnipeg, her Michif roots on her paternal side run deep in St. Boniface, St. Norbert and beyond. Her maternal side is Mennonite from the Altona and Rosenfeld area (Treaty 1).
In 2013, her first book, North End Love Songs (Muses’ Company) won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Since then, her work has garnered awards and critical accolades across genres. Her novels The Break (House of Anansi) and The Strangers and The Circle (Hamish Hamilton) were all national best sellers and won multiple literary awards.
Her fourth novel, real ones (Hamish Hamilton) will be released in fall 2024.
Vermette’s work for children and young adults includes the picture book, The Girl and The Wolf (Theytus) and graphic novel series, A Girl Called Echo (Highwater).
She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, and an honourary Doctor of Letters from the University of Manitoba.
katherena lives with her kids – fur and human – in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River.
Shelley Wood
Shelley Wood’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New Quarterly, CNQ, Room, Geist, Globe & Mail, Bath Flash Fiction, Antigonish Review, the Saturday Evening Post, and more. Her second novel, The Leap Year Gene, was named one of the Globe & Mail’s bestfiction books of 2024, and her 2019 debut, The Quintland Sisters, was a #1 Canadian bestseller. A medical journalist by profession, Shelley has worked as the director, Global News for WebMD’s Medscape, and as the editorial director for the non-profit Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York, NY. She divides her time between Kelowna and Sechelt, British Columbia.
Bridget Canning
Bridget Canning’s debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was a finalist for the 2017 BMO Winterset Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the NL Fiction Award, and it was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. Her second novel, Some People’s Children, was a finalist for the 2020 BMO Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Award. Her third book and first short story collection, No One Knows About Us, was published by Breakwater Books in the fall of 2022. It was named a finalist for the 2023 Alistair MacLeod Award and won the NL Book Award for Fiction.
Bridget holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Memorial University and a Master of Literacy Education from Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2019, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL. She grew up in Highlands, NL, and currently lives in St. John’s.
Angela Antle
Angela Antle is a PhD candidate at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and a member of Norway’s Empowered Futures 2023 cohort. A writer and former CBC producer, her work has been recognized by The New York Festivals, The Gabriel and Gracie Allen Awards, The Atlantic Journalism Awards, The Nickel, Berlinale, Dublin and Wexford Film Festivals. Her first novel will be published by Breakwater Books in 2025.
R.H. Thomson
R.H. Thomson has appeared in film and theatre across Canada, including as Matthew Cuthbert in Anne with an E, in the film Chloe, directed by Atom Egoyan, as Marshall McLuhan in The Message by Jason Sherman, and in This Was The World by Ellie Moon.
An advocate for the arts, R.H. has worked on numerous history and arts projects. For the First World War centenary, he built The World Remembers – Le Monde Se Souvient, an international commemoration exhibit now installed at the Canadian War Museum and available online at theworldremembers.org. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
david Ferry
David Ferry is a director, dramaturge, actor, and writer. His short story April’s Fool was published in Riddle Fence Magazine. His full length play Breaking Windows (November 9, 1938) has been commissioned by the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in Toronto and will be workshopped in September 2022. He recently edited and wrote the forward to the award winning historical look at Theatre Passe Murialle by Peter Jobin (Beyond Walls -Porcupine’s Quill.) He has written a stage adaptation of the music CD 11/11 (songs by Ron and Connie Hynes) that is in development for production. He has adapted or written, and directed/produced 12 previous pieces for Short Waves, Short Stories, a program he developed for Writers at Woody Point.
He produced, directed and co-wrote the site specific promenade play The Postman which was commissioned by the 2015 PanAmerican Games in Toronto. David’s most recent play, Tobacco Road, is a one person play for actor Stuart Hughes, with Blues songs played by Stuart, that is in development for production. He has voiced many Audio books and has directed over 20 of them for Penguin-Random House, Audible and ECW Press. In 2011, David was the recipient of the City of Toronto Barbara Hamilton Memorial Award for contribution to the Arts.
Des Walsh
Acclaimed poet and screenwriter Des Walsh has won international awards for works like The Boys of St. Vincent and Random Passage.
His work has won many prestigious international awards including a Gemini Award and the Gold Medal at the Banff Television Festival, the UmbriaFiction Award in Italy, the Grand FIPA d’Or Cannes and the 1995 Peabody Award.