TIMOTHY J. ANDERSON
Timothy Anderson spent nine years as a publisher/editor of Tesseract Books and several years working with both Hodgepog and Dinosaur Soup kidlit imprints of The Books Collective. His own writing in the speculative field includes a novel (Resisting Adonis), short fiction (Prairie Fire, Tesseracts9, Year’s Best Fantasy 6), and stage works (The Singing Blade, Ziggurat, Nobody Likes Cassandra, etc.). Armed with a Bachelor of Journalism/PoliSci from Carleton, a Bachelor of Music from the University of Ottawa, an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and certificates in music theatre (Banff MUTSE) and arts management (York University VSMP), he teaches writing at various post-secondary institutions and was added to the YouthWrite faculty in 2007. Timothy has been a juror for the Ontario Arts Council, the Hamilton Region Literary Awards, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize.
Timothy has had an active stage and concert career, performing in venues as diverse as the National Arts Centre, Carnegie Hall, Dollywood, and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre as well as regional and local theatres.
His recent accomplishments include winning the 2006 BookTelevision reality-TV series of the 3-Day Novel (with Juggernaut) and being awarded an Alberta Centennial medallion for his contributions to the arts and advocacy in Alberta.
Kelley Armstrong grew up in London, Ontario. After graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a degree in psychology, she switched gears and studied computer programming while focusing on her writing. Her first novel, Bitten (2001), launched her urban fantasy series, which has appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, USA Today and Globe and Mail. The year 2008 will see the release of her eighth Otherworld novel, her second Nadia Stafford crime novel, and the first book in a young-adult fantasy trilogy.
Barbara Haworth-Attard is a native of Elmira, Ontario, presently residing in London, Ontario with her family. June 1995 saw the publication of her first junior novel, Dark of the Moon. Since then she has written 13 novels in the historical fiction, fantasy and contemporary genres for middle-grade and young adult readers. She is published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company and is also published in Denmark and France. She is the winner of the Saskatchewan Snow Willow Young Adult Book Award and the British Columbia Stellar Young Adult Book Award for her book Theories of Relativity, which also received a Governor-General’s Literary nomination for 2003. She has been shortlisted for numerous other awards including three times being "honour book" for the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award, the Mr. Christie Award, the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year Award, and the Red Maple, Silver Birch, White Pine, Red Cedar, Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice and Arthur Ellis Mystery Awards. Her latest book is a contemporary YA entitled A is for Angst.
Dena Bain Taylor has lived most of her life in her birthplace, Toronto. She holds a BA and PhD in English from the University of Toronto, an MA in English from the University of Waterloo, and an ARCT in Voice from the Royal Conservatory of Music. While an undergraduate, she lived for three years in Rochdale College, receiving a different sort of education and publishing science fiction stories in prozines. Her Master's thesis was on R.A. Lafferty, Ursula LeGuin and Roger Zelazny, her doctoral dissertation on William Blake and the Kabbalah.
For 15 years she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Toronto, where she annually taught a course in SF/fantasy. At the same time, she and her husband Charles owned Ben Abraham Books, specializing in the occult, William Blake, and SF/fantasy. For the past 12 years she has directed U of T's Health Sciences Writing Centre, and acts as a media expert on SF/fantasy and the occult. Most recently, she was series advisor for the Women’s Network TV series Ghostly Encounters.
Dena’s publishing record is eclectic: The Young Learner's Illustrated English-Chinese Dictionary (1994); numerous articles and conference papers (1984–2007) on SF/fantasy, on William Blake, and on scientific rhetoric; and, most recently (September 2007), the online "Comprehensive Guide to Writing in the Health Sciences." She has also begun publishing short fiction again, with one story in Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City (eds. Martin Greenberg & John Helfers; 2004) and another forthcoming in Future Weapons of War (eds. Joe Haldeman & Martin Greenberg). Her current writing projects include a fantasy trilogy and a screenplay.
His mother likes to claim that she found him under a rock, but Robert J. Wiersema was actually born in a small town 20 minutes outside the middle of nowhere (Agassiz, British Columbia, "the Corn Capital of BC"). He spent his childhood in the circus, at times on the highwire, at others inside the machine that has the answers to all of your questions. After a long voyage by sea and a lengthy apprenticeship at the merciful hands of his wife and, later, son, he now lives in a castle by the sea, the yard of which needs mowing.
Robert studied English Literature at the University of Victoria, graduating with an Honours degree with a focus in post-structuralist literary theory and contemporary Canadian writing. His first novel, the fantasy Before I Wake (Random House Canada, 2006), was shortlisted for the 2007 Sunburst Award.
Despite his fledgling literary career, Robert continues to work at his day job as event coordinator at Victoria's Bolen Books and to work as a freelance writer and reviewer for such publications as the Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun and Quill and Quire.
He wonders whether the cigars he smokes while he reads for review purposes are tax-deductible, and wishes he had the courage to find out. He is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories, and when he has a spare moment, he'll mow the lawn. Honest.
