Guests

Live Can*Con

November 1-3, 2024

2024 Guests Of Honour

  • Sarah Gailey

    Author GoH: Sarah Gailey

    Sarah Gailey is a Hugo Award Winning and Bestselling author of speculative fiction, short stories, and essays. Their nonfiction has been published by dozens of venues internationally. Their fiction has been published in over seven different languages. Their most recent novel, Just Like Home, and most recent original comic book series with BOOM! Studios, Know Your Station are available now. You can find links to their work at sarahgailey.com.

  • Author GoH: Waubgeshig Rice

    Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written four fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His breakthrough novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. The sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, was published in October 2023. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002, and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and three sons.

  • Editor GoH: Jennifer Brozek

    Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her BattleTech tie-in novel, The Nellus Academy Incident, won a Scribe Award. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, and Predator. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com.

  • Editor GoH: Diana M. Pho

    Diana M. Pho is a queer Vietnamese-American independent scholar, playwright, and Hugo Award-winning fiction editor. She has over a decade of experience in traditional, Big Five publishing, including Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing, and the Science Fiction Book Club. Presently, she is now Executive Editor at Erewhon Books, acquiring and editing genre-bending and game-changing fiction. Find out more at https://dianampho.com/

  • Agent GoH: Arley Sorg

    Arley Sorg is an associate agent at kt literary. He is a two-time World Fantasy Award Finalist and a two-time Locus Award Finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards. Arley is senior editor at Locus, associate editor at both Lightspeed & Nightmare, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He is a guest critiquer for the current Odyssey Workshop, and is the week five instructor for this year’s Clarion West, among other teaching and speaking engagements. Find him at arleysorg.com, his Twitter, or Facebook.

2024 Special Guests

marie bilodeau

Marie Bilodeau is an Ottawa-based author and storyteller, and is the current Chair of Can*Con. Her speculative fiction has won several awards and has been translated into French (Les Éditions Alire) and Chinese (SF World). Her short stories have also appeared in various places like Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, and anthologies. Marie is also a storyteller and has told stories across Canada in theatres, tea shops, at festivals and under disco balls.

E.D.E. Bell (she/her or e/em) is a fantasy writer and small press editor. A passionate vegan and earnest progressive, she feels strongly about issues related to equality and compassion. Eir works are quiet and queer and often explore conceptions of identity and community, including themes of friendship, family, and connection. She lives in Ferndale Michigan, where she writes stories, revels in garlic, and manages the creative side of her indie press, Atthis Arts. You can follow Emily's adventures at edebell.com.

C. S. E. Cooney is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author, a Rhysling Award-winning poet, a game designer, an audiobook narrator, and the singer-songwriter Brimstone Rhine. Find her on social media via her LinkTree https://linktr.ee/csecooney

Canadian, biologist, award-winning author/editor, for the past 25 years Julie E. Czerneda has shared her curiosity about living things and optimism about life through her science fiction and fantasy, published by DAW Books, NY. Out now is Julie’s 22nd novel, Spectrum, continuing Esen’s misadventures in the Web Shifter’s Library series, featuring all the weird biology one could ask. Her fantasy includes the Aurora winning novel, The Gossamer Mage. November 2022 will see the release of To Each This World, a standalone SF. Julie is represented by Sara Megibow, of KT Literary. Find more at www.czerneda.com

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative fiction.He has published various novels for adults, the latest of which is Son of the Storm (Orbit, 2021), first in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Nameless Republic (the second book in the series, Warrior of the Wind, is forthcoming in 2023). His debut novel. David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019) won the 2020 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African.

He has also published works for younger audiences under the pseudonym Suyi Davies such as Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line (Random House, 2022), Minecraft: The Haven Trials (Del Rey, 2021) and contributed to the instant #1 NYT bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy. His shorter works have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies, and have been nominated for various awards.

Okungbowa is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, where he currently lives. As a speaker and instructor, he has taught writing at the college level and spoken at various venues, institutionally and publicly. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @suyidavies, or via his newsletter, SuyiAfterFive.com.

David Demchuk’s debut novel The Bone Mother won the 2018 Sunburst Award for adult fiction, and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award, among others. His new book RED X, an unusual combination of gothic horror, true crime, urban history and queer memoir, was published in August 2021 and was listed as one of the year’s top 100 books by New York Public Library and CBC Books, and one of the year’s top 20 books by Rakuten Kobo. David was originally born in Winnipeg, and currently lives in Toronto.

Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning author of fiction, poetry, and criticism. She is the science fiction and fantasy columnist for the New York Times Book Review and the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of This Is How You Lose the Time War, which has received several honours including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Aurora Awards and been translated into over ten languages.

Ed Greenwood is a Canadian writer, game designer, voice actor, and librarian best known for creating The Forgotten Realms® fantasy world. He still works on the Realms fifty-six years later, but has created or co-created Stormtalons, Mornmist, and dozens more, and contributed to the fantasy settings of others, including Oz and Middle Earth. Ed’s 420-plus books have sold sold over 40 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 40 languages.
Ed was elected to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art & Design Hall of Fame in 2003, has won multiple ENNIE, Origins, and other awards, and was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2022. Follow Ed on Twitter @TheEdVerse for daily doggerel and ongoing Lord Wolf snark fiction.

After leaving molecular biology, Derek Künsken worked with street kids in Central America before joining the Canadian foreign service. He now writes science fiction full time in Gatineau, Québec. His short fiction has appeared in major magazines like Analog, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s, and numerous year’s best anthologies. His fiction has been nominated for the Locus and Chinese Nebula Awards, and won the Aurora and the Asimov’s Award. Right now he’s finishing the 4-book Quantum Evolution series. Critic Rich Horton describes Derek “as one of the best pure ‘hard science’ writers of the current generation…”

emmy nordstrom higdon (they/them) holds a PhD in justice-oriented social work with a focus on critical animal studies from McMaster University, with peer-reviewed publications in public health and psychology. In 2019, they made a lateral career move into publishing after four years as a bookseller at a local indie.

They are a member of the planning team for the Festival of Literary Diversity, a faculty member at the Manuscript Academy, and a literary agent at Westwood Creative Artists. They are a queer, trans, non-binary colonizer originally from Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), now based in Tkaronto (Toronto, Ontario).

emmy lives with their partner, a Deaf Dalmatian named Pavot, and two formerly feral Maine coon cats, Whisper and Willow. They keep busy with vegan cooking, thread painting embroidery, crochet, wholesome video games, snail mail, their sticker collection, and… obviously, reading.

Murder is their comfort read.

Mark Leslie (Lefebvre) is the author of more than twenty-five books that include his humorous urban fantasy Canadian Werewolf series, ghostly explorations (Haunted Hospitals, Creepy Capital, etc.). He is also the editor of more than ten anthologies. He has also worked in the book industry since 1992, the same year his first short story was published, and has helped thousands of writers navigate the complex world of the business of writing and publishing.

Matt Moore is an Aurora Award-winning author of horror and dark science fiction who’s been writing stories since he could clutch a pencil and carve block letters into handwriting paper. Raised in small town New England, a place rich with legends and ghost stories, he now lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Sylvain Neuvel dropped out of high school at age 15. Along the way, he has been a journalist, worked in soil decontamination, sold ice cream in California, and furniture across Canada. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago. He taught linguistics in India, and worked as a software engineer in Montreal. He is also a certified translator, though he wishes he were an astronaut. He absolutely loves toys; his girlfriend would have him believe that he has too many, so he writes about aliens and giant robots as a blatant excuse to build action figures (for his son, of course). His debut, Sleeping Giants, was described by NPR as “one of the most promising series kickoffs in recent memory.”

Derek Newman-Stille (they/them) PhD ABD is a disabled, Queer, Nonbinary academic, author, artist, activist, editor, and reviewer. They run the 8 time Aurora Award winning website Speculating Canada. They edited the collections Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile) and We Shall Be Monsters (Renaissance) as well as co-wrote Whispers Between Fairies (Renaissance) with Nathan Frechette.

Terese Mason Pierre is the co-editor-in-Chief of Augur Magazine and the co-director of AugurCon. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, have appeared in Fantasy, Uncanny, ROOM, The Walrus, THIS Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Elgin and Rhysling Awards, the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and twice for the Ignyte Award. She is a winner of the Writer’s Trust Journey Prize. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

dave ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC. His short stories have appeared in venues including Lightspeed, Podcastle, and Fireside. He is the author of The Hidden Ones (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and the forthcoming short story collection What Elegant Function (coming 2024 from Off Limits Press). dave is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, and the co-editor of Baffling Magazine. Find him online at www.dave-ring.com or @slickhop on Twitter.

Mark Robinson is a Canadian adventurer, storm chaser and meteorologist.  Named as one of Canada’s Top 100 Explorers by Canadian Geographic, Mark’s chased (and been chased) by tornadoes across the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. Mark has been intercepting hurricanes since 2005, and has documented many major storms including Katrina, Ike, and Sandy. He's also chased innumerable ice storms, blizzards, and snowstorms.  Mark’s adventurous spirit has taken him around the globe.  He has witnessed avalanches,  experienced -110 degrees Celsius temperatures and jumped into both the Arctic and Southern (Antarctica) Oceans. When he's not seeking out intense adventures, Mark is a meteorologist and on-air personality at the Weather Network and hosts the shows StormHunters and Unearthed.

2024 Panelists

Jen Albert

Stephanie Anne

Claudie Arseneault

Charlotte Ashley

Pauline Barmby

Rebecca Bennett

Amelinda Bérubé

Cal Black

‘Nathan Burgoine

Kerry C. Byrne

S.M. Carrière

Kaitlin Caul

Carolyn Charron

E.L. Chen

Geoffrey W. Cole

Brandon Crilly

Megan Davies-Ostrom

A.J. Demas

Ashley Deng

Jen Desmarais

Rebecca Diem

Diana Dima

James Downe

Deanna Duxbury

Aysha U. Farah

Cortni Fernandez

Jen Frankel

Warren Frey

Geoff Gander

J.F. Garrard

André Geleynse

Ben Berman Ghan

Victoria Goddard

Cait Gordon

Jason Harley

Lydia M. Hawke

Kate Heartfield

Geneviève Hébert-Jodoin

Cathy Hird

Rebecca Hirsch Garcia

Ashley Hisson

Ada Hoffmann

Ai Jiang

K.V. Johansen

Steve Kenson

Stephen Graham King

Ariel Kroon

Felice Kuan

Michèle Laframboise

Rich Larson

Ariel Lee

Victoria Liao

Kari Maaren

Evan May

Selena Middleton

Donald Montgomery

Tiffany Morris

Ira Nayman

Nina Nesseth

Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga

Suzan Palumbo

Y.M. Pang

Caitlyn Paxson

Helga R. Paxton

Pat Poitevin

Sarah Ramdawar

Melissa Ren

Vanessa Ricci-Thode

Erin Rockfort

Lynne Sargent

Jesse Scoble

Safia H. Senhaji

Craig Shackleton

Avi Silver

Madona Skaff-Koren

Su J. Sokol

Mona Storm

A.D. Sui

Andrew F. Sullivan

Andy Taylor

Carolyne Topdjian

Hayden Trenholm

Sienna Tristen

D.G. Valdron

Clare Wall

Joan Wendland

Maaja Wentz

Liz Westbrook-Trenholm

Ed Willett

Gregory A. Wilson

Tao Wong