World Literacy of Canada

Margaret Atwood – Margaret Atwood is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children. Atwood is a contributing author to Graeme Gibson’s The Bedside Book of Beasts.

Bonnie Burnard – Bonnie Burnard’s first novel, A Good House, won The Giller Prize and the CBA People’s Choice Award and was published around the world in many languages. Her newest book, Suddenly, creates an astonishingly intimate portrait of three women balanced on the knife edge of middle age and is a novel with the power to change the way women, and men, understand one another.

Anthony De Sa – Anthony De Sa’s first book, Barnacle Love, is a Giller Prize Finalist. Barnacle Love confronts the promise and disappointment inherent in the choices made by fathers and the expectations placed on sons.

Christopher Dewdney – Christopher Dewdney is one of Canada’s most articulate and thoughtful cultural commentators. He has published three works of popular non-fiction, two of which have been finalists for the Governor General’s Award. Soul of the World offers extraordinary insights into the nature of time and its influence on us.

Sarah Elton - Sarah Elton is the food columnist for CBC’s Here and Now and her writing has appeared in publications across North America. Her new book Locavore takes a look at the local food movement in Canada.

Joy Fielding – Joy Fielding has authored more than a dozen acclaimed novels including Charley’s Web, Heartstopper, and Mad River Road. Still Life is a tale of riveting suspense told from the vantage point of a comatose woman.

Graeme Gibson – Graeme Gibson is a past president of PEN Canada, a member of the Order of Canada, and is the recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize and the Toronto Arts Award.  For The Bedside Book of Beasts, Gibson has gathered works of art and literature that capture the power, grace, and inventiveness of both predators and their natural prey.

Wayne Grady – Wayne Grady has been a freelance magazine writer since 1981 and is the author of seven books, the editor of six literary anthologies and is a French to English translator. Grady is a contributing author to Graeme Gibson’s The Bedside Book of Beasts.

Marjorie Harris – Marjorie Harris is one of Canada’s leading garden writers.  In Ecological Gardening, Harris shows how little use pesticides and chemicals are when making a lush and abundant garden.

Rashi Khilnani - Rashi Khilnani has a segment called The Indo-Canadian Report on Radio Canada International, the CBC's overseas broadcast, in which she explores India-Canada relations and happenings in the Indo-Canadian community.  Originally a print journalist, Rashi has worked for the Associated Press and the Financial Times Group in England, and has been published in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and The Ottawa Citizen, among other publications.

Lauren Kirshner – Lauren Kirshner is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s M.A. program in Creative Writing, where she was mentored by Margaret Atwood. Where We Have to Go is an absorbing novel that offers a fresh and contemporary take on the universal themes of family, friendship and self-acceptance.

Lyman MacInnis – Lyman MacInnis is an award-winning author and has acted as a strategist and facilitator to corporations and professional organizations of all sizes. In How to Succeed in Anything by Really Trying, MacInnis advises on topics from networking, leadership, and conflict resolution, to how to never embarrass yourself when addressing a crowd.

Peter Mansbridge – Peter Mansbridge is the Chief Correspondent of CBC News and anchors CBC’s The National in addition to all CBC News Specials and his own Mansbridge One on One. In his first book, Peter Mansbridge One on One, he shares an extraordinary collection of the best interviews with the leading thinkers and cultural icons of our time.

H Nigel Thomas – H Nigel Thomas is a retired professor of literature at Laval University.  He is the author of seven books and was shortlisted for the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award. Why We Write is a collection of interviews with fifteen key African-Canadian poets and novelists.

Jonathan Vance – Jonathan Vance holds the Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Culture in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario. In A History of Canadian Culture, Vance addresses one of the quintessential anxieties of Canadians: where, and what, is our culture?

Eleanor Wachtel – Writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel has been the host of CBC Radio's award-winning programs, Writers & Company, since its inception in 1990 and The Arts Tonight from 1996 to 2007, as well as Wachtel on the Arts.  Widely honoured for her insightful and engaging style, she's the author of four books of interviews, including Original Minds and Random Illuminations: Conversations With Carol Shields.

Michael Winter – Michael Winter’s book The Big Why was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction award. His fifth and newest book, The Architects are Here, explores the nature of grief and friendship in powerful prose.