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Join us in-person to meet and listen to authors, illustrators, and performers from across Canada! Check back regularly to see additions to our 2023 lineup!
Bryan Bradfield, a long term southern Alberta performer, plays a wide range of instrumentals on an acoustic steel guitar (dobro).
Ali Bryan is an award-winning novelist and creative nonfiction writer who explores the what-ifs, the wtfs and the wait-a-minutes of every day. Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she now lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies on Treaty 7 Territory, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family. For more, visit www.alibryan.com or @alikbryan on IG.
Coq
The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships
TWYLA CAMPBELL has been writing about food, wine, cocktails, and travel for 14 years and is CBC Edmonton Radio’s long-standing restaurant reviewer and culinary expert. Twyla sits on several national and local food judging panels and is a sought-after panelist when it comes to the topic of food and restaurants.
Prairie
Paul Coccia is the author of the bestselling Orca Soundings title Cub, which was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and The Player. His most recent book, On The Line, was co-authored with Eric Walters. Paul has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and lives in Toronto with his family.
I Got You Babe
Cody Hall is an up-and-coming musician who grew up on a farm near the small town Stavely in the heart of Southern Alberta. From a young age, Cody was always drawn to music, as he got older, his love for music only intensified and he started to write his own songs, drawing inspiration from personal experiences and storytelling.
Since then, he has been making a name for himself as a talented singer-songwriter, performing at local venues and festivals around Western Canada.
Cody’s music blends genres and has influence of classic country, modern americana and a bit of rock and roll. With heartfelt lyrics and catchy melodies that resonate with audiences of all ages. He has a passion for storytelling through his music and aims to connect with listeners on a deeper level. With a strong work ethic and undeniable talent, Cody Hall is poised to make a big impact on the country music scene.
Alexandra Dodd (She/Her) recently graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a BFA in Dramatic Arts (Performance). While her primary interests lie in performance, Alex is an avid writer and has enjoyed playwriting for a number of years and recently had one of her scripts, It Comes in Threes, produced for the first time through TheatreXtra, a student run theatre company based at the U of L. She is excited to present at the Word on the Street festival and share some knowledge about one of her favourite things!
ARNOLDA DUFOUR BOWES is a Métis writer who grew up in Saskatoon but has lived around the world, from New Zealand to Saudi Arabia. She has worked in construction and nursing, and she loves new adventures, from skydiving to surfing. She is the author of 20.12 m: A Short Story Collection of a Life Lived as a Road Allowance Métis, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the High Plains Book Award. Arnolda lives with her husband, three children and two dogs in a small town in Saskatchewan.
Maggie Lou, Firefox
20.12m
Eric Dyck is a cartoonist and art educator living in Lethbridge, AB. Eric has shared his love of cartoons and comic-storytelling with folks of all ages for more than twenty-five years. Eric has been documenting his experiences and adventures in Southern Alberta through his webcomic, Slaughterhouse Slough. Eric uses his comic strip to share about the people that he meets, the stories that he hears, and to celebrate the critters and flora of Southern Alberta. Eric’s work can also be found in Wider Horizons, The Sprawl, and YYScene. Find out more at http://www.ericdyck.com/
My name is Christina Fox. My traditional Blackfoot name is Iitsisaanoowa which is translated to “Vision Beyond”. I am a proud Grandmother, Great Grandmother and Elder from the Blood Tribe who teaches at Children of St. Martha School in Lethbridge, Alberta. I am honored to have written My Suitcase: Nii Sookayis. It is my story of my beautiful grandparents, my Blackfoot values and my beloved suitcase that was taken at residential school. My grandparents taught me so many important lessons when I was a girl. They taught me miinoomattskoohsit (don’t give up) and aksimoyiihkan (pray) which are two values that brought me to where I am today and led me to sending this project to you. I believe that there is a “who” and a “what” within all of us. The “what” is in our heads and the “who” is in our hearts. Let me tell you about who I am… I am a self taught singer, writer and musician whose heart and spirit are fueled by music. I believe that every person is a gift to this world and that every day is a gift of life. I am a teacher and a leader in my community who believes in sharing her gifts and talents with the world. I listen to my heart and I am passionate about keeping our circle strong and never leaving anyone out. I believe in courage, being kind to ourselves and one another and that our beautiful, traditional values will bless us all.
My Suitcase: Nii Sookayis
Jenna Greene is an author of YA and children’s fiction, best known for the award-winning Reborn Marks series, and co-host of the Jot Notes podcast, where she interviews authors from all over the world. When not writing or podcasting, she can be found in the classroom, teaching Grades 1 and 2. For more information, visit jennagreene.ca.
An Owl Without a Name
Hali Heavy Shield is a multidisciplinary artist and a member of the Blood Tribe of Southern Alberta. Her first book for children was inspired by the many adventures she’s had with her mom, Faye, who is also an artist. Hali’s work is influenced by experiences in her home community, including Blackfoot stories, significant sites, family, and women as sources of strength and goodness. She lives in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Naasha is an Artist
Farah Heron is the critically acclaimed author of romantic comedies for adults and young adults filled with huge South Asian families, delectable food, and most importantly, brown people falling stupidly in love.
Farah’s books have been praised in The Globe and Mail, Book Riot, Oprah Magazine, Bustle and more, and have been named best of the year by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, NPR, CBC Books, Kobo, and more.
How to Win a Breakup
Chataya Holy Singer, Niitsiitaakii – The Only Woman, is an Indigenous Fine Arts graduate from the University of Lethbridge. Chataya applies her artistic talent to honour and educate others about Blackfoot culture. Chataya has done amazing work at the U of L and within her community including her recent exhibition No’tsiitsi – My Hands at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, designing the 2022 Moonlight Run logo and, in 2021, designing T-shirts commemorating the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in partnership with the City of Lethbridge. Chataya will speaking on her background, knowledge and practices throughout her time studying at the U of L.
Michelle Kadarusman grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and also lived many years throughout her father’s homeland of Indonesia before moving to Canada in the year 2000. Her books have earned numerous nominations, including for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Ontario Library Association Silver Birch Award, and the Green Earth Book Award. Her highly acclaimed novels include The Theory of Hummingbirds, Girl of the Southern Sea, Music for Tigers, and Berani. Her first picture book, Room for More, was published in 2022. Michelle now lives in Toronto, Canada and Byron Bay, Australia.
We the Sea Turtles
There is something weightless about Bailey Kate’s songs, they pass by with a kind of supernatural ease. Timeless songwriting and dexterous arrangements are the cornerstones of her debut record “Within / Without.” The songs give a first impression of simplicity, but layers of harmonic and lyrical complexity reward the attentive listener. On “Within / Without,” Bailey explores themes of relationships, community, and existential dread with clear-eyed sincerity.
KLP perform fun engaging and interactive musical entertainment for the young and young at heart. They sing classic kids rock that the parents will remember from their own childhood as well as unique original songs.
Kate Leth is a Canadian author and illustrator working in comics, animation, design, and feelings. A grown-up goth and pop culture devotee, Kate specializes in work for kids and teens. Her comics work includes Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat!; Girl Over Paris; Spell on Wheels; and Adventure Time, among others.
Mall Goth
Naomi K. Lewis is a fiction writer and non-fiction writer based in Calgary. She is an editor and acquisition coordinator at Freehand Books.
ANN-MARIE MacDONALD is a best-selling novelist, playwright, actor, and television presenter based in Montreal and Toronto. Her work in all capacities has been honoured with multiple awards. Her plays are produced and published internationally. Her new novel, FAYNE was an instant Number 1 national bestseller. It was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year (2022) and a CBC Best Canadian Fiction Books of 2022. Her other novels include Fall on Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, and Adult Onset. Her work is translated into seventeen languages. In 2019, Ann-Marie was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of her contribution to the arts and her LGBTQ2SI+ activism. Her play, Hamlet-911 premiered last summer at The Stratford Festival. Fall on Your Knees (celebrating its 26th anniversary this year!) is an award-winning and international bestseller and only the second Canadian book to be chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club pick. And Fall on Your Knees had its world premiere stage adaptation in Toronto in January. And went to London, Ottawa and Halifax this spring.
Fayne
Jordan MacKinnon has been a writer for over 15 years. It has been a hobby of hers with the goal of eventually publishing a book. To do so though, she would first have to finish a story idea instead of getting distracted by shiny new ones. Jordan works at the Lethbridge Public Library and loves to gain new ideas (read: adding books to her never-ending tbr list). In her opinion, Chocolate is always the answer no matter the question.
Canadian singer/songwriter TARA MACLEAN has been an internationally renowned and award-winning recording and touring artist for over twenty-five years. She has written and recorded six solo albums and two with her band, Shaye. A playwright, author, poet and mother, Tara lives in her home province of PEI and on Salt Spring Island, BC. Song of the Sparrow is her first book.
Song of the Sparrow
Jane Marshall has written for the Edmonton Journal, Travel Alberta, VUE Weekly, Avenue Magazine, and the University of Alberta’s Illuminate magazine, and was content editor for the “Capital Ideas” sections in the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald. She currently writes an adventure blog for Breathe Outdoors to inspire people to connect with nature. Her first book, Back Over the Mountains (Penguin) introduced her to the Himalayas and she’s been learning about sacred lands ever since. Marshall fell in love with the land and people of Tsum, Nepal, and co-founded The Compassion Project, a Canadian-registered charity striving to improve healthcare and education. Her trekking company, Karuna Mountain Adventures, connects people to the land and people of Nepal so that they too can experience the Himalayas. She lives in Canmore with her husband and two children and teaches English to refugees and newcomers. You can find her in the alpine, random camping or skiing, and at seejanewrite.ca.
Searching for Happy Valley
Sid Marty is a poet, author and musician based near the communities of Pincher Creek and the Crowsnest Pass. He is the author of five books of poetry and five nonfiction works. Though best known as a nonfiction author, he began his career as a poet. His first book, Headwaters (1973) was published to widespread national acclaim. Over the years, he has continued to publish poems in books, school texts, anthologies and magazines. The culmination of all that dedication to the “crafte so longe to lerne” is this collection of poems both published and new.
Oldman's River
Mary-Anne McTrowe was born and raised in Southern Alberta. Her first introduction to the ukulele was in elementary school, but she didn’t pick it up again in earnest until 1994. She played more or less secretly for the next ten years, until her first self-published album debuted at the 2005 Alberta Biennial. Mary-Anne received her B.F.A. in Art from the University of Lethbridge in 1998 and her M.F.A. from Concordia University in 2001. She has collaborated with other ukulele musicians from San Francisco to Sweden, and helped start the Lethbridge Ukulele Jam in 2014.
Mandy Michelle is a traditionally published, contemporary romance author and folk artist from Southern Alberta.
Mandy holds her BA and MA in History and wrote her thesis on Religion in the Imperial Roman Army. Naturally, romance writing followed. She has two novels published with Scarsdale Publishing and is featured in an anthology through Limitless Publishing.
She is a proud, longtime member of the River Bottom Writers, a winner of National Novel Writing Month, eight years running, and a graduate of Winghill Writing School.
Her world revolves around her terrier, Oliver, but she also enjoys wood carving, at risk to her typing fingers, baking retro recipes, and hiking, slowly.
You can find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mandymichellewriting and @wordycupcake on Instagram.
Ginger Mullen’s immersion into the oral tradition began at Lethbridge Public Library, when she was hired for the Storytellers-at-Large program. This sparked a lifelong passion about folktales that led to a Master of Arts in Children’s Literature and a variety of teaching opportunities. She currently tells stories as a member of Storytelling Alberta and leads interactive workshops as part of The Gingerbread Way, a program she designed to support storytelling for children.
Ginger’s interactive presentation will explore the basics of oral storytelling – what it is, how it’s done – and invite participants to practice some simple storytelling techniques.
Ryan North’s recent work includes the non-fiction books How To Take Over The World and How To Invent Everything, the semi-fictional graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and the so-far-fictional Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series for Marvel. He’s a multiple New York Times bestseller whose work has been translated into 16 different languages so far, and as a linguist, he’s very happy about that. He lives in Toronto, where he once messed up walking his dog so badly it made the news.
Danger and Other Known Risks
David Norwell is an author, illustrator, and world traveller. He holds a BSc in Geography from the University of Victoria, and has worked for six seasons conducting biological and geological surveys In BC, Alberta, and the Yukon. His passion is communicating science in a way that accesses the human heart. David has visited thirty-three countries, sailed across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, trekked over the Himalayas with a kitten, and hitchhiked over two hundred rides. He is dedicated to understanding the human experience and sharing his findings. When not working on books, he is volunteering at schools, studying Buddhism, and practising meditation.
A Complex Coast
Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane is an Anishinaabe dancer, educator, writer, artist and orator from Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Her grandparents, maternal and paternal, come from Wiikwemkoong. Her parents are residential school survivors. Karen is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy Studies/Indigenous Peoples Education at the University of Alberta and is an Assistant Professor at Mount Royal University in the Treaty Seven region. She is cross-appointed to the Department of General Education, Office of Teaching and Learning, and the Department of Humanities–Indigenous Studies. Her book, Powwow: A Celebration Through Song and Dance, was short-listed for a number of awards and won the CCBC Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. Karen lives in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Powwow: A Celebration through Song and Dance
In the 1960s, Dominique Prinet worked as a commercial bush pilot in the Canadian Arctic and High Arctic, on floats in the summer and skis in the winter, navigating with an astrocompass since this was long before GPS had been invented. He holds an airline transport pilot licence and has more than 5,000 hours of flying. The stories in this book describe some of the adventures he experienced in northern Canada.
Following classical studies in Paris, he took an electrical engineering degree from UBC and an MBA from McGill, paid for by his intensive flying in the Arctic. He worked as VP for Nordair while teaching microeconomics to MBA students at McGill for about 12 years. He moved to Vancouver in 1988 when asked to join Canadian Airlines as their VP Marketing, then went to Tanzania, in East Africa, to turn around the national airline and manage it for five years under a World Bank project. Dominique has climbed several 12,000-foot peaks in the Alps and the Rockies has crossed the Atlantic in a sailing boat and Nepal on foot, flown around North, Central, and South America in a private single-engine plane, and crossed Africa in a small jeep. Much later in life, at 70, he obtained his private helicopter pilot licence. He spent his retirement years as a sailing instructor and instructor evaluator and has published several books on celestial and coastal navigation.
Flying to Extremes: Memories of a Northern Bush Pilot
Karen Romanchuk is a singer/songwriter who was born and raised in small town Alberta to hard working parents who taught her, above all else, to believe in herself. She doesn’t try to be or sound like anyone else because “art” is all about-being unique. She strives to “move” people with her soulful music and writes to extend her personality to the listener. Check out more about her at www.reverbnation.com/karenromanchuk
Since escaping from university with a pair of degrees in theoretical physics, Kevin Sands has worked as a researcher, a business consultant, a teacher, and a professional poker player. He lives in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of the bestselling The Blackthorn Key and Thieves of Shadow series.
Seekers of the Fox
Philipp Schott was born in Germany and grew up in Saskatoon. He now lives in Winnipeg, where he practices veterinary medicine, writes, and shares a creaky old house on the river with his wife, two teenagers, three cats, and a dog. His first book, The Accidental Veterinarian, was a bestseller and was translated into five languages.
Six Ostriches
Starpainter is a folk rock band from Lethbridge, Alberta. They wear their influences on their sleeves, showcasing old-school songwriting craftsmanship and an affinity for gently psychedelic, guitar-heavy arrangements. The songs are steeped in the tradition of prairie-born artistry with a pop sensibility that defies their youth. Their debut record, titled “Bury Me By My Family,” is the culmination of several years spent writing and performing together.
Angela Sterritt is an award-winning investigative journalist and author from the Gitanmaax community of the Gitxsan Nation on her father’s side and from Bell Island, Newfoundland, on her mother’s side. Sterritt has worked as a television, radio, and digital journalist for more than a decade and is a finalist for the the Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Nonfiction. She is the host of the CBC original podcast Land Back, investigating land theft and land reclamation in Canada. She lives on the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh).
Unbroken
Danika Stone is an author, artist, and educator who discovered a passion for writing fiction while in the throes of her Masters thesis. A self-declared bibliophile, Danika now writes novels for both teens: Switchback (Macmillan, 2019), Internet Famous (Macmillan, 2017) and All the Feels (Macmillan, 2016); and adults: Inescapable (Stonehouse, 2023), Edge Of Wild (Stonehouse, 2016), The Dark Divide (Stonehouse, 2018) and Fall of Night (Stonehouse, 2020).
Switchback was selected as one of the “best YA books of 2019” by The Canadian Children’s Book Center and featured as a “Top 10 YA for Everyone” in Canadian Living Magazine. Her Waterton mystery series was selected by Chapters for their “Our Favourite Canadian Fiction” category.
When not writing, Danika can be found hiking in the Rockies, planning grand adventures, and spending far too much time online. She lives with her family and a houseful of imaginary characters in a windy corner of Alberta, Canada.
Inescapable
Laura Trethewey is an ocean journalist and the author of The Imperiled Ocean and The Deepest Map. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, Smithsonian magazine, Courrier international, The Walrus, Hakai magazine, and Canadian Geographic. She’s the former writer and editor for the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada. She received a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. In 2020, she won Canada’s Writers’ Trust Rising Star Award.
The Deepest Map
SARA TRUUVERT is a Canadian author of Japanese-Estonian descent. She grew up in Toronto and now lives in Ottawa, Ontario, where she writes everything from short fiction to poetry to science articles. Mira and Baku is her first picture book.
Mira and Baku
JOHN VAILLANT’s acclaimed, award-winning non-fiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were #1 national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. He has written for, among others, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus. He lives in Vancouver.
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast
Emily Victoria is a Canadian prairie girl who writes young adult science fiction and fantasy. When not word-smithing, she likes walking her over-excitable dog, drinking far too much tea, and crocheting things she no longer has the space to store. She works at a library where she takes home far too many books.
A Member of the Order of Canada, Eric Walters has written more than 125 books that have won over 100 awards, including a Governor General’s Literary Award for The King of Jam Sandwiches. Eric, a former teacher, got into children’s literature to get his fifth-grade students interested in reading and writing. Each year, he makes presentations to more than 1,100 young people across the country. He lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Flight Plan
