Classically-trained artist Dominic Bercier is the writer-artist-designer behind Mirror Comics Studios, a boutique comic book and graphic novel production and publishing entity from Ottawa, Canada. He produces stories of young heroes losing, longing, striving for and restoring the things they’ve lost, be they love, lives or souls, plunging characters into emotionally charged magical initiations that test their wits and their hearts. You can follow @DominicBercier, @mirrorcomics and @SIGNALsaga on Twitter or visit www.dominicbercier.com, www.mirrorcomics.com, and www.signalsaga.com.

’Nathan Burgoine is a tall queer guy who mostly writes short queer fiction, though he’s up to three novels now. Light was a Lambda Literary finalist. Triad Blood and Triad Soul are available from Bold Strokes Books as well as Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks and Of Echoes Born. He lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his husband Dan and their rescued husky, Max. You can find ’Nathan online on his website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Carolyn Charron is a speculative fiction writer with short stories in three Flame Tree Publishing anthologies (Supernatural Horror, Dystopia & Utopia, and Murder & Mayhem), online in The Saturday Evening Post, and in Nothing Without Us(Fall of 2019).

On the editor’s side of her desk, she reads slush for Apex and Lightspeed magazines and has been a juror for Speculative Literature Foundation grants. She spends far too much time on Facebook and not enough on her blog or Twitter. She lives in Toronto with her family and is currently working on a Canadian historical trilogy combining a lesbian blacksmith, magical clockworks, and a menopausal pirate.

You can follow Carolyn on Facebook, Twitter, and her blog.

Bob DeRosa is a retired public school special education teacher. Prior to teaching, he stumbled into a pretty cool copywriting job working for entertainment conglomerates such as NBC and SONY Entertainment in the city that doesn’t sleep.  He’s currently working on a children’s holiday book which focuses on acceptance and inclusion.

You can check out his YouTube channel where he uploads weekly cooking demonstrations focusing on meals that benefit anyone with an immune disorder.  You can also follow him on Twitter!

Éric Desmarais has had an eclectic career, from casino dealer to canal boat captain to radio station DJ. Since 2009, he’s worked as a layout artist and desktop publisher for the federal government. During his off time, he works as a freelance layout artist for various Canadian-based authors and publishers, roasts gourmet flavoured coffee, runs several pen-and-paper role-playing games, writes, and helps run JenEric-Designs.ca (Home of the Prix Aurora Award fandom blog, The Travelling TARDIS. ) Éric has published several novels with Presses Renaissance Press, and the second book of his Baker City Mystery YA series, The Sign of Faust, was a finalist for the 2019 Prix Aurora Award.

He lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife, daughter, and newborn son. You can read more about Éric on his website and find a list of his books at the Presses Renaissance Press online shop!

A consummate student, Jennifer Desmarais has three degrees and just graduated from her fourth. The most recent being her diploma in Tourism and Travel at Algonquin College, which she uses in her day job with Orleans Travel & Cruise Centre, helping clients design trips with a geeky/nerdy theme.

Co-founder of JenEric Designs, she creates unique geeky crocheted items and writes bi-weekly articles on sexuality and bi-weekly articles on Fandom Travel. Her blog, The Travelling TARDIS, was nominated for the 2018 and 2019 Prix Aurora Awards.

Jen has written one short story that won a contest in 2016. You can read it here.

She lives in Ottawa with her husband and their library of over 3000 books. They have a daughter (Sept 2016) and a son (July 2019).

Robin Elizabeth is an Australian writer, ranter, reviewer, dyslexic, twitter addict, and definitely a mad mumma. She enjoys getting caught in the rain, but not as much as she like piña coladas and any number of 80s classic cocktails. Her latest book is Confessions of a Mad Mooer, Postnatal Depression Sucks (see the book trailer), but she’s also known for the sexy and hilarious What Happens in Book Club series. Robin blogs at Write or Wrong about depression, her love of literature, and whatever tickles her fancybone.

She lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and three children.

You can learn more about Robin on her website, follow her on Twitter and Facebook, and buy her books!

Martin, also known as Fibro Jedi, is a gamer and a writer with Fibromyalgia who lives in Scotland with his wife, furbaby, and human baby.

You can learn more about Martin on his website and read samples of his Star Wars: The Old Republic fan fiction, Survival of the Sithest (click to see all chapters). You can also connect with him on Twitter. He says,”I type when I can control my hand pain, but I aim to reply to everyone eventually.”

Susan is currently convalescing in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom with her mostly black cat named Raisin while waiting for Western or Eastern medicine, luck, or chance to end an unrelenting severe migraine. In her copious amount of spare time Susan reads, visits doctors, reads, goes to her acupuncturist, reads, watches TV, plays Sudoku, reads, beta-reads/edits/proofs colleagues’ work,  and when the migraine eases up enough to let her think clearly, Susan writes sexy romance novels under a pseudonym and designs fun and comfortable clothing derived from photos of nature at www.vermontseasons.net.

You can learn more about her books on her Amazon author page and follow her hypnotherapy website, too!

Nathan Caro Fréchette is originally from Montreal, but has been living in the Ottawa/Gatineau region since 2004. He is a sequential artist and author. He has published several short stories, both sequential and traditional, as well as two graphic novels, five novels, and one non-fiction book on writing. He was the editor and director for the French Canadian literary magazine Histoires à boire debout, and work at the Ottawa Public Library. He has been teaching creative writing since 2005.

You can learn more about Nathan on his Website, follow him on Facebook,  Twitter , Goodreads, and buy his books on his Amazon author page.

Emily Gillespie is a Toronto-based author, disability activist and professional daydreamer. Her work explores the themes of memory, identity and mental health journeys. Emily enjoys working in community spaces and examining individual and collective experiences. She views storytelling as a tool for resisting predominant social narratives.

Emily has a BA in English, and an MA in Critical Disability Studies from York University. Dancing with Ghosts (Leaping Lion Books, 2017) is her first novel. In 2018, she won a contest for her short-story “D is for Despair,” sponsored by the Ontario Book Publishers Organization.  Her poetry was recently featured in the Inkwell Anthology, I Am a Lake.  “No Room at the Inn,” a short-story adapted from her second novel is part of the Nothing without Us, anthology by Renaissance Press fall 2019. She is currently drafting her second novel, teaching creative writing, and experimenting with zines as well as performance art.

You can follow Emily on Twitter and her blog.

Born on the prairies, Stephen Graham King has since traded the big sky for the big city and now lives in Toronto. His first book, Just Breathe, tells the blunt, funny, and uncompromising story of his three-year battle with metastatic synovial sarcoma. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies North of Infinity II (Pas de Deux), Desolate Places (Nor Winter’s Cold) and Ruins Metropolis (Burning Stone). His first space opera novel, Chasing Cold, was released in 2012, and the first book in the Maverick Heart series, Soul’s Blood, came out in 2016. The second, Gatecrasher, was released in 2017. The third book in the series, A Congress of Ships, is now available.

Stephen can be found online his own website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Cait (pronounced like ‘cat’) Gordon is originally from Verdun, Québec, and has been living in the suburbs of Ottawa since 1998. She worked for over two decades as a technical writer, then channelled her love for words into creative writing. She is the author of the ’Cosm Series: Life in the ’Cosm and The Stealth Lovers (Renaissance). Her short stories appear in anthologies such as Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland (Exile Editions), We Shall Be Monsters (Renaissance), and Space Opera Libretti (McNett and Rossman). She is also the co-editor of the Nothing Without Us anthology.

For her day job, Cait is a freelance editor for indie authors. If you need editing services, visit her biz, Dynamic Canvas Inc.

A bit of a social media junkie, Cait can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. She also has an author website and is the creator/editor in chief of the Spoonie Authors Network.

A trained psycho-social counselor and life coach, (and author of Higher Maintenance, published in 2016 by Balboa Press) Marianne Granger’s commitment to helping people led her to work as coordinator of a volunteer center, and years later, as director of a large food bank. While managing and training employees and volunteers, she wrote and edited promotional and fundraising material. Her love of reading, writing, and cinema lead her to study screenwriting, which culminated in a completed feature-length screenplay. In 2001, she was struck down by a mysterious and devastating chronic illness that eventually became the inspiration for her book. She lives with her husband in southern Canada.

You can follow Marianne on Facebook, Twitter, and her blog. To learn more about dragon taming, visit her website!

Melissa Guida-Richards is a 25-year-old Stay at Home Mom with migraines, PCOS, IBS, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. She created the Spoonie-Mama blog to be a helpful resource to other mothers dealing with chronic pain and the various challenges of motherhood. She has a wonderful husband named Charles, two sons (eight months old and two years old,) two dogs and two cats.

Melissa Guida-Richards is a 25-year-old Stay at Home Mom with migraines, PCOS, IBS, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. She created the Spoonie-Mama blog to be a helpful resource to other mothers dealing with chronic pain and the various challenges of motherhood. She has a wonderful husband named Charles, two sons (eight months old and two years old,) two dogs and two cats.

You can connect with Melissa on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Kohenet Talia Johnson is a multi-faceted woman who is transgender, autistic, Jewish, queer, and more than the sum of her parts. Her work centres on bridging faith and queer communities, facilitating workshops, educating, speaking, writing, one-on-one coaching, counselling, and mentoring. 

Talia is also a queer and trans sensitivity editor for writers and publishers and is Chair of the Board of Heartspark Press. She is an ordained Hebrew Priestess who is working toward entering graduate school at the Master’s level. Her studies bridge faith, queer, and psychology using queer and feminist intersectional approaches. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

You can follow Talia on her website, Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Despite her day job as a bureaucrat, April Laramey is a writer, dabbles in photography, spends too much time on the internet, paints, and occasionally gets some exercise. Her favourite colour is green, she wants to work in a bookstore when she grows up, and when she dies she wants her tombstone to read “To Be Continued…”

You can read more about her on Facebook or Twitter.

Derek Newman-Stille is a PhD ABD and teaches at Trent University. They run the eight-time Aurora Award-Winning website and associated radio show Speculating Canada. Derek is also the co-creator (along with Brittany Warman and Sara Cleto) and editor of the folklore digital humanities hub Through the Twisted Woods. They have written afterwards for publications like Accessing the Future and Playground of Lost Toys. They were the editor-in-chief of the Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins and We Shall Be Monsters anthologies. 

You can follow Derek on Twitter!

With a degree in biology, Madona Skaff somehow ended up in mining research. Her scientific background has always inspired her science fiction stories and frequently sneaks into her mysteries.

She is the author of Journey of a Thousand Steps, a mystery novel about a marathon runner disabled by MS who turns sleuth in order to find her missing friend. She has published several mystery and science fiction short stories including the Arthur Ellis Award finalist First Impressions, which appeared in The Whole She-Bang 2.

You can visit out her website for more information, and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.  See the book trailer for her novel here.

Laurie Stewart lives on a hobby farm in rural Ontario (Canada) with the love of her life, a small black cat, and a huge white Yeti who thinks he’s a lap cat.

She writes medieval fantasy, urban fantasy, and gritty YA dramatic fiction. As a proper renaissance lady, she also paints landscapes, is active in food preps for the zombie apocalypse, and loves gardening.

Lastly, because she refuses to let it define her, Laurie is a proud spoonie. She battles chronic migraines and debilitating pain from a degenerating spinal fusion on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. She usually wins.

You can follow Laurie on Twitter, Facebook, and her website.

Jamieson Wolf is an award-winning, number one bestselling author of over sixty books and writer of Two Steps at a Time, a blog about having multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. In 2019, he released his gripping memoir, Little Yellow Magnet, followed by Love and Lemonade (the third book in the Lemonade Series), and his short story, The Descent appears in the Nothing Without Us anthology.

He is an accomplished artist who works in mixed media, charcoal, pastels, and oil paints. He is also something of an amateur photographer, a poet, a perfume designer, and a graphic designer.

Jamieson currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his husband Michael. You can read more about Jamieson on his website or his blog, and can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

Amy M. Young has her roots in Miramichi, NB, but now lives in Ottawa with her husband, an adorable daughter, and many fur babies. Her greatest impediment to writing is Oliver, her red Siamese cat, who reckons paying him attention is more important than typing.

Amy’s rock fiction about the band Torrent has even spawned fan fiction from readers who have read her chapters online. Her novel, A Desert Song,  is now available and Amy is currently writing Kiss the Flame (both books are about Torrent). There is even another WIP with a paranormal theme happening!

You can read samples of her fiction on her Website. You can also follow Amy on Facebook and Twitter.