Participants

Rebekah Caris

Rebekah joined FriesenPress in 2022, bringing with her several years of experience in education and psychology. As a Book Promotion Specialist, she coaches authors on navigating the modern book marketing landscape, tailoring strategies to their unique goals. This role perfectly blends her background in teaching with her lifelong love of books. When she isn’t helping authors succeed, Rebekah enjoys spending time with family, walking her dog, playing video games, and, of course, reading!

Mastering your Marketing Platforms; Social Media, Blogging & Branding

Mary Lynn Cloghesy

Mary Lynn Cloghesy is a writer and editor from Calgary, Alberta, as well as the founder of the Leadership Literary Lab, a program for aspiring authors. She has been nominated for multiple awards for her novels (in progress), has placed in flash fiction competitions, and has published in various genres. Find her on Substack @wildrosewriter, or via her website : https://marylynncloghesy.com/

Longevity for Writers: Tips and Tricks to Sustain Your Health and Career

The Reader/Writer Relationship: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?

Eric Dyck

Eric Dyck is a cartoonist and art educator living in Lethbridge, AB. He has shared his love of cartoons and comic-storytelling in art galleries, museums, schools and libraries throughout Alberta and New Brunswick. 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 as a means of learning more about the history of Southern Alberta. Find out more at http://www.ericdyck.com

Lorne Fitch

Lorne Fitch has been a biologist for over 50 years. He has criss-crossed the province, learned the landscape, investigated fish and wildlife populations, and engaged with ranchers, farmers, industry, and bureaucrats over conservation. His insights are the result of much scar tissue. Lorne is a professional biologist, a retired provincial fish and wildlife scientist, and a former adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. He is also the co-founder of the riparian stewardship initiative called Cows and Fish. For his work on conservation he has been part of three Alberta Emerald awards, an Alberta Order of the Bighorn Award, and a Canadian Environmental Gold Award, with additional recognition from the Wildlife Society, the Society for Range Management, the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists, the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and the Alberta Wilderness Association. His first book with RMB was Streams of Consequence: Dispatches from the Conservation World. Lorne lives in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Conservation Confidential

Pia Guerra

Pia Guerra was a 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for her contributions to The Washington Post. She co-created and illustrated Y: The Last Man for DC Comics’ Vertigo line, which became a New York Times bestseller and won multiple Eisner Awards, a Harvey Award, the Spike Award, and Canada’s Joe Shuster Award. With her husband and creative partner, Ian Boothby, Pia is a regular contributor for The New Yorker and co-creator of Mannequin on the Moon cartoons. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Frostbite

Carissa Halton

Carissa Halton is an awarding-winning writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. Her essays have been widely published, and her book, Little Yellow House: Finding Community in a Changing Neighbourhood, was a finalist for the 2019 Edmonton Book Prize. Revolution Songs is her debut novel.

Revolution Songs

Naomi Hansen

Naomi Hansen is an award-winning author. Her debut book, Only in Saskatchewan: Recipes & Stories from the Province’s Best-Loved Eateries, was published by TouchWood Editions in 2022. Naomi is the recipient of two 2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards for Only in Saskatchewan: the First Book Award and the Book of the Year Award. She has contributed to many publications, including Chatelaine and Canadian Living, and is currently the Saskatoon Bites food columnist for CBC Saskatchewan. Her second book, Building a Sustainable Kitchen: A Practical Guide to Prioritizing the Planet from the Heart of Your Home, was published by TouchWood Editions in April 2026. She lives on Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her partner, Paul, and their dog, Rue.

Building a Sustainable Kitchen

Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho

Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho has published short stories and personal essays in PRISM international, Ricepaper Magazine, River Teeth, Room and several anthologies, and was a finalist for the 2021 Jim Wong-Chu Award for Emerging Writers (presented by the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop). The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is her first book. Wiley lives in North Vancouver, BC, with her family.

The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street

Michel Jean

MICHEL JEAN is an award-winning writer, and former news anchor and investigative journalist, much appreciated by the Quebec public. He worked at Radio-Canada and the Quebec television network TVA before devoting himself full-time to his writing. He has published over a dozen books including his bestselling novels Kukum, an exploration of his Innu roots and winner of the Prix France-Québec, and Qimmik, which deals with a harrowing chapter of Inuit history. His work has been translated into several languages. his most recent novel being Kabasa. Michel Jean has also edited two short story collections featuring Indigenous voices: Amun, released in fall 2016, and Wapke, published in May 2021, both of which are available in English.

Michel Jean is Innu from Mashteuiatsh, and his native origins resonate in many of his writings.

Ninan: Tiohtiá:ke, Montreal

E. K. Johnston

E. K. JOHNSTON is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several YA novels, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist The Story of Owen and Star Wars: Ahsoka. Her novel A Thousand Nights was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. The New York Times called The Story of Owen a clever first step in the career of a novelist who, like her troubadour heroine, has many more songs to sing and in its review of Exit, Pursued by a Bear, the Globe & Mail called Johnston the Meryl Streep of YA, with limitless range. E. K. Johnston lives in southwestern Ontario.

Titan of the Stars

Demon in the Sand

The Third Period Comeback

Jay Odjick

JAY ODJICK is an artist and writer from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg Algonquin community, just outside of Maniwaki, Quebec. He has created comic books and produced the animated TV series Kagagi: The Raven, which airs in Canada, the US and Australia. He previously illustrated Robert Munsch’s picture books Blackflies, Bear for Breakfast/Makwa kidji kijebà wìsiniyàn as well as The Ocean Goes on Forever, which appears in the anthology Munsch Mania. He is thrilled to be able to join forces with Robert Munsch to bring stories about today’s Indigenous kids to a broad audience. Visit him online at www.kagagi.squarespace.com.

Kaboom!: Blast Off

Cale Plett

CALE PLETT is a nonbinary, genderfluid writer who lives on Treaty One Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They grew up on a dead-end gravel road and used to get lost in the woods for fun, scary, abandoned cabin and all. Now they write YA novels that span everything from high school rock bands to nightmares in the woods to reality TV gone wrong. They are the author of the queer YA romance Wavelength, an Indie Next pick, and YA horror novel The Saw Mouth, with another standalone YA horror novel, Stranglehold, coming in fall 2027.

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The Saw Mouth

Barbara Reid

As a child, Barbara Reid found herself recreating pictures from books she was reading when the illustrations in those books didn’t match what she had envisioned. She also hated parting with the characters she had gotten to know, so she would keep them alive by illustrating them in her own stories.

She had never thought about illustration as a career, but as fate would have it, one day while she was in high school she passed a room that had information about the Ontario College of Art. It inspired her, and she went on to study at the college.

When Barbara illustrated her first picture book, Mustard by Betty Waterton, she was her own harshest critic. She enjoyed illustrating the book but thought there was room for improvement. It wasn’t long before she had the opportunity to work on The New Baby Calf by Edith Newlin Chase, the first book to feature her Plasticine sculpture illustrations. Now, more than twenty titles later, her work in such picture books as The Party, The Subway Mouse, Read Me a Book, Perfect Snow, Picture a Tree, Sing a Song of Mother Goose and Welcome, Baby is immediately recognizable to children and parents across the country. Be sure to check out her latest book, a collaboration with author Emil Sher, entitled I Love You More. Barbara has received every major Canadian children’s book award, and in 2013 she received two more outstanding honours: she was named a member of the Order of Canada and received the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People. In 2015, Barbara became the Honorary Chair of Family Literacy Day, held every year on January 27.

Each Barbara Reid illustration starts as a pencil drawing. Then Barbara moulds out her drawing using Plasticine. You might think that her illustrations would be delicate, but they’re actually rather heavy. Some of her final pictures weigh up to three kilograms! And how does she make sure the illustrations aren’t damaged? She stores each one in its own pizza box. (Which makes you wonder how much pizza she actually eats!).

Barbara even describes her artwork as being “like a pizza” because her images are created by adding layer upon layer of Plasticine and detail after detail to construct the completed work. She uses her fingers and fingernails as well as sticks, pins, combs, wires, cloth and other items to help shape and build each part of the picture. If she makes a mistake, she just peels off the offending piece and starts again! She also mixes her own colours and adds materials such as silver paint or glitter to create special effects.

Each image takes a long time to complete — large two-page spreads can take more than seven intense days to finish. Then Barbara’s husband, Ian Crysler, photographs the illustrations. It’s these photographs that appear in the finished book.

When she is not busy writing or illustrating books, Barbara visits schools and libraries, where she is thrilled to meet young students and see the wonderful artwork they create. Many children and classes send her letters and photos of their art — a selection of which are featured on her website, www.barbarareid.ca.

Barbara Reid is married and has two daughters. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

The Story Hunter

Oliver Ridge

Oliver Ridge is a Schulich Leader scholar at the University of Western Ontario. He’s been inspired by the beauty of space for as long as he can remember and hopes to pursue a career in astrophysics. This is his first published book.

Beyond Earth: How Space Exploration Affects Life at Home

Yolanda Ridge

Yolanda Ridge is the author of three books in the Orca Footprints series, What Poo Can Do, Microbes to the Rescue and Beyond Earth, as well as two other juvenile nonfiction titles from Annick Press. She’s also written several middle-grade novels, including two environment-themed titles for Orca Young Readers. She has a master of science degree and is adept at making complex concepts understandable—a skill she uses in her science writing and teaching. She lives in Rossland, British Columbia.

Beyond Earth: How Space Exploration Affects Life at Home

Robert J. Sawyer

ROBERT J. SAWYER has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science-fiction novel of the year. The ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name, and his Quantum Night was long-listed for Canada Reads. A member of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, and the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Rob lives in Mississauga.

The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine

David Scott

Born and raised in northern Ontario, David R. Scott began venturing from home to find birds at age sixteen and has been an avid birder and naturalist ever since. After moving to southern Alberta, he came to love the birds of the prairies, badlands, foothills, and mountains as well as those of the boreal forest on the Canadian Shield. A librarian by trade, David works at the University of Lethbridge and serves as chair of the Alberta Bird Record Committee and the Christmas Bird Count editor for the province. He has also spent several years on the board of Nature Lethbridge and has authored and coauthored articles published in Nature Alberta Magazine, North American Birds, and Western Birds. David resides in Lethbridge, Alberta with his wife, Emma, and son, Lewis, who recently received his first pair of binoculars.

A Field Guide to the Birds of Alberta

Natalie Zina Walschots

Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer. She is the Author of Hench (William Morrow, 2020), a novel about the mistreated and undervalued employees of supervillains. The direct sequel, Villian (William Morrow, May 2026) continues the story of the Auditor as she fights institutionalized superheroism and goes on the exact opposite of a redemption arc. Hench was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. Natalie is the Narrative Director at Double Rex Studios, currently at work on their debut title, Thumbsplitter. Her writing on the interactive adventure The Aluminum Cat won an IndieCade award for Innovation in Experience Design, and her work with Digital Howard as part of the social media team for the television show Wynonna Earp won Best Cross-Platform Project – Fiction at the 2017 Canadian Screen Awards. Natalie’s work also includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game story bibles, and weirder things classified as “interactive experiences.” She is (unfortunately) the author of two books of experimental poetry: Thumbscrews, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry; and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. Natalie plays a lot of TTRPGs, participates in a lot of Nordic LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and four morally bankrupt cats.

Villain

Blair Yoxall

BLAIR PALMER YOXALL (he/him/his) is a writer and poet. His fiction has won the Striking Prose competition and the James Patrick Folinsbee prize in English and been shortlisted for the Norma Epstein Foundation Award and an Indigenous Voices Award. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Glass Buffalo, The Fiddlehead and Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology. Yoxall is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Alberta and of Métis and settler parentage. He holds an MA in English in Indigenous literature and Westerns, and enjoys fly-fishing in the Alberta Rockies. Treat Them as Buffalo is his debut novel.

Treat Them As Buffalo