Meet the 2024 Writers

Writers confirmed to date

Jill Barber (Sunday night musical guest)

Jill Barber is a three-time Juno Award nominated singer-songwriter. Her critically acclaimed repertoire spans a transformative spectrum from folk, to vocal jazz, to pop, and includes songs in both French and English.

Jill’s breakthrough jazz album Chances was certified Gold for 40,000 copies sold in Canada, and her 2018 album Metaphora featured the #1 hit song ‘Girl’s Gotta Do.” Jill’s work has earned her awards—such as the Sirius XM Jazz Artist of the Year and the East Coast Music Award for Album of the Year—and scores of fans, including Blue Rodeo, Ron Sexsmith, and Kris Kristofferson, who called Jill “a real songwriter, and a damn good songwriter.” Her evocative and timeless songs have been featured in film and TV, scoring shows such as Orange Is the New Black, The L Word, and Heartland. Her latest album Homemaker (2023) delivers ten quietly profound songs about the complexities of motherhood, marriage, and the struggle to feel at home in one’s own identity.

An unforgettable, enchanting performer, Jill has over 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify and has headlined iconic venues such as Toronto’s Massey Hall and Roy Thompson Hall, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre and Tokyo’s Blue Note and Cotton Club.

Brent Butt

Brent Butt has made his home in Vancouver for thirty years, but was born and raised in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. After high school he worked as a drywaller, salesperson, comic book artist, and darkroom technician before deciding to pursue his real dream, and in February of 1988, Butt performed stand-up comedy for the first time on an amateur night at a Saskatoon comedy club. He is now considered one of the funniest people in Canada, with a career in stand-up comedy that stretches into five decades, including numerous appearances at major festivals in multiple countries and being voted Best Male Stand-Up in Canada by his peers in the profession. He also created and starred in two successful sitcoms—Corner Gas (“Funniest Show on TV” as voted by TV Guide readers, currently showing in 60 countries) and Hiccups (multiple Leo and Writers Guild Awards). When you add in two theatrical comedy films (No Clue and Corner Gas: The Movie) and four seasons of an animated Corner Gas spinoff, it may seem surprising that Brent’s latest venture—literature—has taken a rather dark turn. His debut novel is the thriller Huge, which was a #1 national bestseller. Learn more at brentbutt.com or on Twitter and Instagram @BrentButt.

Gregor Craigie

Gregor Craigie has been a journalist for more than 25 years at the BBC World Service, CBC Radio, CBS Radio and Public Radio International. He has hosted On The Island on CBC Radio One in Victoria, BC, since 2007. His first book, On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake, was a finalist for both the Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and the City of Victoria Book Prize, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 book in 2021. His first novel, Radio Jet Lag, was published in 2023. His new book is Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canadas Housing Crisis.

Wade Davis

Wade Davis is currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and was Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013. His 23 books, published in 22 languages, include One River, The Wayfinders and Into the Silence, winner of the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, the top nonfiction prize in the English language. In 2016, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2018 he became an Honorary Citizen of Colombia. His most recent book is a collection of essays, Beneath the Surface of Things, which is being published in April 2024. He lives on Bowen Island, BC.

Sam George, in conversation with Jill Yonit Goldberg

Join us for an event for The Fire Still Burns, a tale of survival and redemption through which Squamish Elder Sam George recounts his residential school experience and how it led to a life of addiction, violence and imprisonment until he found the courage to face his past and begin healing.

Sam George is a Squamish Elder and a survivor of the Canadian Indian Residential School system. A retired longshoreman and semi-retired drug and alcohol counsellor, Sam now works as an educator with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and speaks with students and community groups about his experiences.

Jill Yonit Goldberg is a writer and a literature and creative writing instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, BC, where she teaches the Writing Lives course in which students collaborate with Indian Residential School survivors who are writing their memoirs. She worked with Sam George to bring his story to the page. Her novel, After We Drowned, is forthcoming with Anvil Press in 2024.

Susan Juby

Susan Juby is the award-winning, bestselling author of Mindful of Murder, which debuted at number one on the independent bookstores’ bestseller list and was nominated for the Leacock Medal for Humour. She has also written Getting the Girl, Another Kind of Cowboy and The Woefield Poultry Collective, as well as the bestselling Alice series (Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last). Her novel Republic of Dirt won the Leacock Medal in 2016. In 2024 she released A Meditation on Murder, the hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of nine books including Doppelganger, No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire, which have been translated into over 35 languages. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice. Her most recent book, Doppelganger, was a #1 bestseller in Canada and was selected for numerous best-of-the year lists including The New York Times Notable Books of 2023, Time Magazine’s Top Ten Non-Fiction Books of the Year, a Guardian Best Idea Book of 2023, The Times (UK) Books of the Year, Slate’s 10 Best Books of 2023, and Vulture’s #1 Best Book of the Year.

Grant Lawrence

Grant Lawrence is an award-winning writer, musician, broadcaster, and live event host who was the first author in the history of the BC Book Prizes to win the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice twice. He is the author of four bestselling books for adults: Adventures in Solitude, The Lonely End of the Rink, Dirty Windshields, and Return to Solitude. His first children’s picture book, Bailey the Bat and the Tangled Moose, was released in 2021 and his second book for children, Adventures in Desolation Sound, will be released in 2024. Grant is also the host of the CBC Music Top 20, the lead singer of the internationally acclaimed garage band The Smugglers, a Canadian Screen Award winner, and a former columnist for the WestEnder, the Vancouver Courier, Vancouver Is Awesome, North Shore News and Powell River Peak. He is also a goalie for the Vancouver Flying Vees beer league hockey team. In 2023, a 30th anniversary edition of the Smugglers’ breakout album In The Hall of Fame was released on double gatefold gold vinyl.

Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. Her work has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Chalmers, the Governor General’s, Gemini, Dora Mavor Moore, John Drainie, the Gascon-Thomas, the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Booksellers Association, and the Commonwealth Prize. Her writing for the stage includes the plays Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), Belle Moral: A Natural History and Hamlet-911; the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for Anything That Moves; her novels are Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, Adult Onset, and, most recently, Fayne. Ann-Marie graduated from the Acting Program of The National Theatre School of Canada in 1980. In 2019 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is married to theatre director, Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.

Kyo Maclear

Kyo Maclear is an essayist, editor, novelist and children’s author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages, published in over twenty-five countries, and garnered nominations from the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the National Magazine Awards. Her nonfiction books include the hybrid memoir Birds Art Life, a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and winner of the Trillium Book Award, and Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets, winner of the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Her work has appeared in Orion Magazine, Brick, Border Crossings, The Millions, LitHub, The Volta, Prefix Photo, Resilience, The Guardian, Lion’s Roar, Azure, The Globe and Mail and elsewhere. She has been a national arts reviewer for Canadian Art and a monthly arts columnist for Toronto Life.

She holds a doctorate in Environmental Humanities and teaches writing at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA and Humber School for Writers. She is an editor-at-large with Tundra Books/Penguin Random House Canada and recipient of the 2023 Vicky Metcalf Award for Young People for her body of work.

Kyo lives in Tkaronto/Toronto, on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Haudenosaunee, Métis, and the Huron-Wendat.

Waubgeshig Rice

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He’s written four books, most notably the bestselling novels Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002, and spent most of his journalism career with the CBC as a video journalist and radio host. Rice left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career.

In addition to his writing endeavours, Waubgeshig is an eclectic public speaker, delivering keynote addresses and workshops, engaging in interviews, and contributing to various panels at literary festivals and conferences. He speaks on creative writing and oral storytelling, contemporary Anishinaabe culture and matters, Indigenous representation in arts and media, and more.

He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and three sons.

David Roche

David Roche is a popular motivational speaker and performer, and he has taken his one-man show, The Church of 80% Sincerity, on tour across the world, performing from Sydney to Moscow, London to Los Angeles, and even at the White House. He has also had several roles in films and documentaries. A recent recipient of the Order of Canada, Roche is also a volunteer for the Sunshine Coast Hospice in British Columbia. With his partner, Marlena, he leads storytelling and writing workshops, inspiring others to voice their own stories.

His new collection of essays, Standing at the Back Door of Happiness, has been called “…brilliant, illuminated, painful, wise, encouraging and funny” by author Anne Lamott. Roche lives in Roberts Creek, BC.

Kara Stanley and Simon Paradis

The Pain Project: A Couple’s Story of Confronting Chronic Pain is a wide-ranging exploration of the definitions, treatments, science, myths, and meanings of the mysterious and multi-faceted force that is pain. As difficult as the topic is, it can also provide us with an opportunity to question our current course—what can we learn when we confront our pain head-on? Honest, deeply researched, insightful, and ultimately hopeful, The Pain Project is a must-read for anyone looking for a greater understanding of pain as a phenomenon and in their own lives.

Kara Stanley holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and her writing has appeared in Fugue, HipMama and Paste. She is the author of three books—a memoir, Fallen, which was longlisted for the BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, Ghost Warning, a novel, and, most recently, with her husband Simon Paradis, The Pain Project. She lives on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.

A graduate of Concordia University’s Integrative Music Arts program, Simon Paradis has been playing in blues, rock, country and roots bands across Canada for 30 years. A serious fall in 2008 resulted in life-altering injuries, but after a long rehabilitation process, he has returned to music again. In 2014, his duet project, Stanton Paradis, released Good Road Home, a CD of original acoustic material. In 2015, Simon recorded Mouthful of Stars, a debut full-band CD of original music written by Simon and his wife, Kara Stanley. In 2019 he released Grooves and Ruts with his band Farm Team. He lives on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.

Howard White

Howard White was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat, Spilsbury’s Coast, The Accidental Airline, Writing in the Rain and A Mysterious Humming Noise. A new edition of his perennial bestseller The Sunshine Coast will be released in 2024. Howard is the publisher of The Encyclopedia of British Columbia (2000) and he has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association’s Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Harbour Publishing celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2024.