Imaginarium 2013

Dave Duncan is an award-winning author whose fantasy trilogy, The Seventh Sword, is considered a sword-and-sorcery classic. His numerous novels include three Tales of the King's Blades -- The Gilded Chain, Lord of the Fire Lands, and Sky of Swords; Paragon Lost, a previous Chronicle of the King’s Blades; Strings, Hero; the popular tetralogies A Man of His Word and A Handful of Men; and the remarkable, critically acclaimed fantasy trilogy The Great Game.

Amal El-Mohtar is a Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, poetry and criticism. Her books include The River Has Roots and the New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which has been translated into over ten languages. Her reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times and on NPR Books. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

M.A.C. Farrant has been writing and publishing since the 1980s: Nineteen works of fiction, non-fiction and memoir; two produced plays, countless book reviews for the Vancouver Sun and Toronto Globe & Mail; and over a dozen chapbooks. Along with Pauline Holdstock, she ran the Sidney Reading Series from 1994–2009.

Her books have been finalists for many awards, among them the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the Ethel Wilson fiction prize, two Jessie Richardson theatre awards, The Van City Book Prize, the National Magazine Awards, the ReLit Award, the Gemini Awards for the Bravo short film adaptation of her story, Rob’s Guns & Ammo, and the Victoria Book Prize (three times), the last of which she won in 2014 for her collection of miniature fiction, The World Afloat. The Strange Truth About Us was one of the Globe & Mail’s Best Fiction books of 2012.

Her 2021 non-fiction book, One Good Thing, was a BC Bestseller. Jigsaw: A Puzzle in Ninety-Three Pieces, another non-fiction book, was released in 2023. In 2024, Talon Books will issue the expanded 20th Anniversary Edition of her memoir, My Turquoise Years.

Her most recent chapbooks are Some of the Puzzles (2021) and The Literary Cow Festival (2024) both from above/ground press in Ottawa. Talonbooks is the publisher of her last ten books.

Farrant is well-known for her acerbic wit and laugh-out-loud humour. BC Bookworld has called her “Canada’s most acerbic and intelligent humourist”. Bill Richardson has called her “a master of the Zen-like art of delivering weight in a way that is featherlight” further noting that she’s “the most accomplished and unapologetic miniaturist in Canadian letters.” Archived material is in the “Special Collections Branch” at the University of Victoria.

Gemma Files, a former film critic, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work; two chapbooks of speculative poetry; the “weird western” Hexslinger Series; a story-cycle; and the standalone novel Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel. Files also has several story collections and a collection of poetry forthcoming.

Lisa L. Hannett has had over 80 short stories published, including in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, The Dark and Year's Best anthologies in Australia, Canada and the US. She has won four Aurealis Awards, an Australian National Science Fiction Award, an Australian Shadows Award, and has twice been nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

MICHAEL KELLY was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. Educated at the University of Hull, he served for twelve years in the Royal Navy before joining the British police and working as a detective in the Regional Crime Squad, Major Crime and Surveillance Units for twenty-five years. After a serious injury on duty, he was retired from the police in 1999. Since then Michael has been a guide and a military historian on the battlefields of the Western Front and Normandy. He is founder member of the Nolan Group, which is engaged in the exploration of the site and action where Alvin C. York was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Argonne Forest, France. Michael is former chair of the H.M.S. Ganges Association, a past president of Grimsby Rugby Union Football Club and President of the Lincolnshire Rugby Football Union.

Catherine Knuttson lives on Vancouver Island, on which the fictional Island of her debut novel, Shadows Cast by Stars, is based. She divides her time among teaching, singing, and writing. Like her narrator, she is a member of the Metis nation.

Matt Moore is an entrepreneur, cook, musician, host, pilot, and the quintessential Southern gentleman. He is the author of The South's Best Butts and A Southern Gentleman's Kitchen. His food writing has garnered critical acclaim from publications including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times. His Southern charm has landed him on the TODAY show, Fox & Friends, VH1, and WGN.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Velvet Was the Night, Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow, and many other books. She has won the Locus and British Fantasy awards for her work as a novelist, and the World Fantasy Award as an editor.

Dominik Parisien is an editor, poet, and writer. He is the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Mythic Dream, Robots vs Fairies, and The Starlit Wood. Together their anthologies have won the Shirley Jackson Award and have been finalists for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Ignyte, and Locus Award. He also won the Hugo, British Fantasy, and Aurora Award for co-editing Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction with Elsa Sjunneson. His debut poetry collection Side Effects May Include Strangers was published by McGill-Queen's University Press. Dominik is a disabled, bisexual French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

A.G. Pasquella is the author of the Jack Palace series. When he’s not writing, he makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and LaserGnu. Born in Dallas, Texas, he now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Ian Rogers is the author of the award-winning collection Every House Is Haunted, which was recently optioned by Sam Raimi, and a feature film adaptation of the included story “The House on Ashley Avenue” is currently in development. Family is his debut novel and was originally released as a limited edition by Earthling Publications, and his novella Grey was published by PS Publishing. His short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Cemetery Dance and Shadows & Tall Trees. He lives with his wife in Peterborough, Ontario.

Specialising in dark fantasy and horror, Angela Slatter is the author of the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the World Fantasy Award finalist Sourdough and Other Stories, Aurealis finalist Midnight and Moonshine (with Lisa L. Hannett), among others. She is the first Australian to win a British Fantasy Award, holds an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and was an inaugural Queensland Writers Fellow.

Peter Darbyshire is the author of six books and more stories than he can remember. He lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he spends his time writing, raising children and playing D&D with other writers. It's a good life.