Nicholas Herring graduated from St. Jerome’s University with an honours degree in English Literature and attended the University of Toronto, where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. He lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island, where he works as a fisherman and a carpenter. His first novel, Some Hellish, won the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Your Breath in Charcoal is his second novel.

Michi (Nhung An) is a barista by day and poet by night. Her writing has been awarded and published in several anthologies and literary magazines such as untethered magazine, Lunch Ticket, and Lavender Review. She moved from the U.S. from Vietnam before choosing to reside in Atlantic Canada with the love of her life.

Sue Sinclair (she/her) grew up in Newfoundland on the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, including most recently New-Fangled Rose (Goose Lane Editions, 2026), nominated for the Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize. All of Sue’s books have won or been nominated for regional or national awards.  Sue teaches creative writing in Fredericton at the University of New Brunswick in Wolastokuk.

Nick Thran is the author of four collections of poems. His second collection, Earworm, won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. His most recent collection, Existing Music, was a finalist for the Fiddlehead Poetry Prize. Nick is also the author of the mixed-genre collection, If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display. He lives on unceded Wolastoqey territory in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Michael Rancic is a freelance arts and culture journalist based in Toronto. He’s the co-founder of multistakeholder music journalism cooperative New Feeling and has written for Maisonneuve, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Spacing, CBC Music, and Bandcamp Daily, among other outlets. His work often looks at the intersection of emerging art, public policy, and technology.