K.J. Aiello is a mentally ill, award-winning writer based in Toronto, ON. Their work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, The Walrus, and This Magazine. They are still waiting for their very own dragon. Sadly, this has not happened, so their cats will have to suffice.

Saturday, April 26
Lore to Reality

Saturday, April 26
Workshop: Writing Trauma with Care

Maya Ameyaw is a former bookseller and currently works as a community arts writing instructor. She has edited several mental health–themed anthologies for youth and adults, and her writing was included in the anthology Brilliance Is the Clothing I Wear (Dundurn Press). Maya also runs a YouTube series and blog where she interviews YA authors about their writing journeys. She lives in Toronto and can be found on Twitter @MayaAmeyaw.

Sunday, April 27
Workshop: Developing Realistic Teen Voice for Upper YA
Spotlight Series Authors

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist, the author of 31 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates  won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long listed for Canada Reads. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Friday, April 25
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction From the Future of Food

Saturday, April 26
Workshop: If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Let’s Write Them (Festival Field Trip)

Chantal Braganza is a writer and editor living in Toronto. She is currently a senior editor at Chatelaine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Hazlitt, The Hairpin, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Fashion Magazine, and Maisonneuve, among others.

Saturday, April 26
In Our Bones: Searching For Ourselves Through Essays

Daniel Coleman teaches in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. His research covers Canadian Literature, cultural production of categories of privilege, literatures of immigration and diaspora, and the politics of reading. His publications include White Civility (2006) and In Bed with the Word (2009) as well as co-edited scholarly volumes.

Sunday, April 27
Deyohahá:ge: Sharing the River of Life

Linzey Corridon is a mixed-race (Afro-Euro-Indo Caribbean) educator, and a Vincentian-Canadian poet and critic. He is the 2021 recipient of Canada’s Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and is currently completing doctoral work on the nuances of the Queeribbean quotidian at McMaster University. His writing has been published in The Puritan, Kola, SX Salon, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Montreal Writes and more. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Friday, April 25
Hamilton Writes

Maxie Dara is a writer and actor from Ontario, Canada. She has been a freelance journalist focusing on the local arts and culture scene for more than five years, with bylines in publications such as Hamilton Magazine and Beyond James, among others. She is also a two-time award-winning playwright, taking home the Best of Fringe award at the 2017 Hamilton Fringe Festival for the musical comedy This Is Not a Musical: The Musical! and the 2020 Torpedo Prize for her play Alone Together, a pandemic drama. Maxie knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when she first fell in love with the written word. She also wanted to be a mermaid but has mostly focused on the writing side of things.

Friday, April 25
Hamilton Writes

Sunday, April 27
Drafts & Drafts

Ki’en Debicki is a queer, Kanien’keha:ka, enby poet living and loving along the banks of Kanyatarí:io (beautiful lake) in Anonwarore’tsherakayon:ne (Hamilton ON). They are an assistant professor at McMaster University, and associate professor at Six Nations Polytechnic. Ki’en’s writing has been published in The Malahat Review, Grain Magazine, Studies in Canadian Literature and Storytelling, Self, Society, among others.

Sunday, April 27
Deyohahá:ge: Sharing the River of Life

Farzana Doctor is a Tkaronto-based author, activist, and psychotherapist. She has written four critically acclaimed novels, a poetry collection, and a self-care workbook for helpers and activists. Doctor received the prestigious Freedom to Read Award in 2023, and in 2020, Seven was chosen as an Amnesty International Book Club’s Reader’s Choice Pick. The Beauty of Us is her first YA novel. Learn more at www.linktr.ee/farzanadoctor.

Saturday, April 26
Main Character Energy
Between Worlds

Jeff Dupuis is the author of the Creature X Mystery series. When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works.

Friday, April 25
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction From the Future of Food

A. Gregory Frankson has published four poetry collections and contributed to six anthologies. He is a former Canadian national poetry slam champion, an inductee to the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour, and a former on-air poetic commentator on CBC Radio One in Toronto. Greg is based in Toronto.

Sunday, April 27
The Stories We Carry: Memoirs of Migration, Memory, and Identity
Drafts & Drafts

Bonnie Freeman is Algonquin/Mohawk and a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University, as well with the Six Nations Polytechnic. Bonnie has published the article, “Promoting global health and well-being of Indigenous youth through the connection of land and culture-based activism.”

Sunday, April 27
Deyohahá:ge: Sharing the River of Life

Rosena Fung is an illustrator, educator, and comic artist. Her debut graphic novel, Living With Viola, was named a best of the year by the New York Public Library, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews, and nominated for the Silver Birch Award, the Jean Little First-Novel Award, and the Garden State Teen Book Award. In her many starred reviews she is often commemorated for her heartbreakingly honest storytelling mixed with her signature poignant humor. Rosena spends her free time reading, petting cats, and eating snacks in Toronto, Canada.

Saturday, April 26
Main Character Energy

Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in various literary journals and magazines. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released in Spring 2021. Rebellion Box, her debut collection of poetry, was released in 2023. Her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies from Gordon Hill Press, was released in 2024.

Sunday, April 27
Burnout and Meltdown: Climate Anxiety in a Capitalist World

Farah Ghafoor is an award-winning poet living on the traditional territory of the Anishnabeg, the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. Her work was awarded the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry, longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, is taught in university courses, and published in The Walrus, the Fiddlehead, Room, and elsewhere. Raised in New Brunswick and southern Ontario, Ghafoor now works in Tkaronto (Toronto) as a financial analyst.

Sunday, April 27
Burnout and Meltdown: Climate Anxiety in a Capitalist World

Cheryl Isaacs can often be found running through the Carolinian forests of Southwestern Ontario, where she has fearlessly enjoyed the trails for years. Her Kanien’kéha culture often appears in her writing. The Unfinished is her debut novel, though her work has appeared in numerous Indigenous publications.

Saturday, April 26
gritLIT After Dark

A resident of Toronto, Kath Jonathan is a poetry, short story, and novel writer. Her work has been shortlisted for the Marina Nemat Award, a finalist for The Janice Colbert Poetry Award, longlisted for the Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for short story, published in a Penguin Random House chapbook and in online literary magazines. Kath holds a Certificate in creative writing and an MA in English literature, both from the University of Toronto.

Saturday, April 26
Dreams Deferred

Amanda Leduc is a disabled writer whose last novel, The Centaur's Wife, is "an exquisite magical world, perfectly rendered, for [a] dark and wonderful story about the dream life of outsiders and the disabled" (Heather O'Neill). Her non-fiction book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space was nominated for the 2020 Governor General’s Award. Her essays and stories have appeared across Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, and she speaks regularly across North America on accessibility and the role of disability in storytelling. Amanda holds a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews. She has cerebral palsy and presently makes her home in Hamilton where she lives with a very lovable dog named Sitka, who once ate and peed on a manuscript. (Everyone’s a critic, it seems.). Her new novel, WILD LIFE is coming in mid-March.

Saturday, April 26
Between Worlds

Edward Y.C. Lee was born in Montreal and is a former arbitrator and lawyer. His fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and in various literary magazines. His radio documentary, Tiger Balm, Batman Comics and Barbeque Pork, was produced by CBC Radio Outfront. Lee lives in Toronto with his wife, Jinah, and their daughter, Erica. The Laundryman’s Boy is his first novel.

Saturday, April 26
Dreams Deferred

Saturday, April 26
Workshop: Plotting and Character Development: A Workshop for the Not So Faint of Heart

Pasha Malla is the author of seven books. His writing has won or been listed for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, the Dublin IMPAC, the Trillium Book Award, an Arthur Ellis Award, the Journey Prize, the Hamilton Book Award, and several National Magazine Awards. Pasha teaches in the creative writing program at York University and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Saturday, April 26
gritLIT After Dark

Sunday, April 27
gritLIT Book Club

Derek Mascarenhas is a graduate of the University of Toronto SCS Creative Writing Program, a finalist and runner up for the Penguin Random House of Canada Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. He is the author of 100 Chapatis and The Mango Monster and his short story collection, Coconut Dreams, was acclaimed by Quill and Quire and The Globe and Mail. Derek lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Saturday, April 26
Festival Field Trip at the Hamilton Farmer’s Market with Derek Mascarenhas

Paige Maylott is a Hamiltonian author, gamer, and accessibility specialist. Her memoir, My Body is Distant (ECW Press, 2023), examines gender transition, critical illness, and digital identity. This work earned the 2024 Hamilton Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the Gold IPPY Award for LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction, a spot on the Rakuten Kobo shortlist, and was one of Hamilton Review of Books’ Best Books of 2023. Praised by CBC Books, Publishers Weekly, Open Book, and the Whistler Writers Festival, among others. When not writing, Paige collects retro video games and blasts 80s hair metal—because sometimes the best plot twist is a guitar solo.

Wednesday, April 23
gritLIT Short Story Winners

Sunday, April 27
Drafts & Drafts

Sadi Muktadir was a finalist for the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence, a finalist for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards, a third-place winner of the Humber Literary Review’s Emerging Writer Story Contest and a winner of Toronto’s What’s Your Story competition. His writing has appeared in Joyland magazine, the Humber Literary Review, Ricepaper Magazine and other literary journals. This is his first novel.

Sunday, April 27
Workshop: Self-Editing: How to Do It Effectively and When to Know to Stop
Spotlight Series Authors

Vinh Nguyen is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Brick, Literary Hub, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, The Criterion Collection’s Current, and MUBI’s Notebook. He is a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant, and diasporic writing. He is the author of the academic book Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience. His writing has been short-listed for a National Magazine Award and has received the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Nonfiction for emerging LGBTQ writers.

Sunday, April 27
The Stories We Carry: Memoirs of Migration, Memory, and Identity

Alpha Nkuranga fled her village as an eight-year-old during the Rwandan civil war of 1994 and subsequently lived in refugee camps in Tanzania and Uganda, where she overcame the odds to graduate high school and attend university. She came to Canada as a refugee in 2010 and currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario, where she works for Women’s Crisis Services of Waterloo Region. Her memoir, Born to Walk, is her first book.

Sunday, April 27
The Stories We Carry: Memoirs of Migration, Memory, and Identity

Born in Poland, Margaret Nowaczyk is a pediatric clinical geneticist and a professor at McMaster University and DeGroote School of Medicine. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Canadian, Polish and American literary magazines and anthologies. She lives in Hamilton, ON, with her husband and two sons. 

Saturday, April 26
In Our Bones: Searching For Ourselves Through Essays

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.

Friday, April 25
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction From the Future of Food

Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is a writer, poet, and editor whose work has appeared in the Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, the Aurora Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Ignyte Award. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese is the chief programming officer at Augur, a speculative arts nonprofit, and co-director of AugurCon, Augur’s biennial speculative arts conference. Terese lives in Toronto.

Saturday, April 26
Writing Speculative Poetry

Saturday, April 26
Lore to Reality
Between Worlds

Sarah Raughley is a graduate of the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her current research concerns representations of race in popular media culture, youth culture, African and African diasporic cultural studies, postcolonialism, and global capitalism. She is also the author of the recent Victorian fantasy Bones of Ruin seriesand the Effigies series.

Saturday, April 26
Main Character Energy

Sunday, April 27
Spotlight Series Authors

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of seven books, including the recent non-fiction A Short History of the Blockade, and the acclaimed novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies.

Thursday, April 24
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in Conversation

Meaghan Strimas is the author of three collections of poetry, and her fourth collection, Make It Stop, is forthcoming. Yes or Nope, Strimas's third book, won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She is the editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen and she co-edited the Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology with the late Priscila Uppal. Meaghan lives in Hamilton with her family.

Saturday, April 26
Workshop: Nobody Knows What They Are Doing: Secrets from Professional Writers

Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer and editor based in Hamilton, ON. Her work appears in Hobart, Corvid Queen, Southern Humanities Review, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Plenitude Magazine, as well as the Queer Little Nightmares anthology, among others. Her stories have been recognized in the PRISM International Short Fiction Contest and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut short story collection, titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press, 2023) explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens. In 2023, Chrysalis won the Writers Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction.

Friday, April 25
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction From the Future of Food

A.G.A Wilmot (BFA, MPub) is an award-winning writer and editor based out of Toronto. Their credits include myriad online and in-print publications and anthologies, and their first book, The Death Scene Artist, was published by Buckrider Books in 2018. Find them online at AGAWilmot.ca.

Friday, April 25
Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction From the Future of Food

Saturday, April 26
gritLIT After Dark

Nicola Winstanley is a writer for adults and children. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and is the recipient of the Alvin A. Lee Award for Published Creative Non-Fiction. Nicola’s fiction, poetry and comix have been published in the Windsor Review, Geist, the Dalhousie Review, Grain magazine, untethered magazine and Hamilton Arts and Letters, among others. She holds an MA from the University of Auckland, NZ, and an MFA from UBC. Nicola teaches at Humber College in Toronto and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Saturday, April 26
gritLIT 2025 Flash Fiction Contest

Liz Worth is a two-time nominee for the ReLit Award for Poetry for her books The Truth Is Told Better This Way and No Work Finished Here: Rewriting Andy Warhol. Her first book, Treat Me Like Dirt, was the first of its kind to provide an in-depth history of Southern Ontario’s first wave punk movement. Her other works also include Amphetamine Heart, PostApoc, and The Mouth is a Coven. Worth’s writing has appeared in Chatelaine, FLARE, Prism, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, among others. Liz is a professional tarot reader and lives in Hamilton.

Saturday, April 26
Lore to Reality