Shauna Singh Baldwin was born in 1962 in Montreal, Canada. She grew up in India and remembers wanting to be a writer from the time she was eleven years old. After a Master’s in Business at Marquette University in Milwaukee, she worked as an IT-consultant. She also published poetry and
was born in 1983 in the Algonkin Native Reserve Pikogan in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Samian does rap on the one hand to express his strong relation towards his ethnicity (in Algonkin and French) and on the other hand to present his previous life. 2004 he met the celebrated Québec based Hip-Hop-Group Loco
Ryad Assani-Razaki was born in 1981 in Cotonou in the West African state of Benin as the son of a computer scientist and a mother who was a literature enthusiast. He studied computer science at the University of North Carolina in the USA and the Université de Montréal in Canada.
born in Vancouver in 1954, is best known for the travel books »Stalinʼs Nose« (1992), about his surreal journey from Berlin to Moscow after the fall of the Berlin Wall, »Magic Bus« (2006) which retraced the Asia Overland »hippie trail«, »Berlin: Imagine a City« (2014), and »Pravda Ha Ha« (2019)
Roméo Dallaire was born in Denekamp, The Netherlands, in 1946. The retired general lieutenant spent thirty-six years serving in the Canadian army. As commander of the UN Blue Helmets in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994, he called in vain for a military UN mandate in order to stop the genocide.
Robert Paul Weston was born in 1975 in Dover, Great Britain. He studied Sociology and Film at Queen’s University in Kingston and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Weston has worked in a number of unusual jobs – as a professional trampolinist, life guard, editor of a literary
Robert R. Amsterdam was born in 1956. He studied Law in Ontario and has been a practicing lawyer since 1980. His areas of expertise are litigation and arbitrating disputes in emerging markets, as well as human rights issues and the legal consequences of expropriation in Latin America and Africa. He
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut in 1964 and he grew up during the civil war in Lebanon. He emigrated to New York when he was 18 years old. After adopting the English language there and earning his living as a salesperson and warehouse worker among other various jobs for
is a spoken word artist with a background in theatre. She has been involved in the slam poetry scene in Montreal since the beginning and – in 2008 – was a guest artist at the Montreal show of Grand Corps Malade. For the last few years she’s been working on
Nancy Huston was born in Calgary, Canada in 1953. At the age of six, after her mother had left the family, she spent a few months in Germany with her future stepmother and learned to speak German. At fifteen she followed her father and stepmother from Canada to Wilton in
Nancy Vo was born in Calgary, Canada. She studied art and architecture and now works as a spatial planner by day and as a children’s book author and illustrator by night. In an interview with Cornelia Funke, Nancy Vo summed up what being an illustrator is all about for her:
Miriam Toews was born in the Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba, in central Canada in 1964. After high school she moved to Montreal, travelled Europe, and returned to Manitoba only for her studies. She did her bachelor’s degree in cinematography, and studied journalism in Halifax. She produced numerous radio documentaries,
