IFOA Biographies

Linwood Barclay, a former columnist for the Toronto Star, is the internationally bestselling author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including Fear the Worst, Too Close to Home, and No Time for Goodbye, which has been optioned for film. Touted as “Canada’s current thriller king” by the National Post, Barclay presents his latest work, Never Look Away, about a husband whose wife disappears, along with everything he thought he knew about their life together.

David Bergen is the author of six novels. His work includes the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning The Time in Between, and the multiple award-winners The Retreat, The Case of Lena S. and A Year of Lesser, also a New York Times Notable Book. Bergen presents The Matter with Morris, an unforgettable story of a man down on his luck – his son has been killed in Afghanistan, his job has put him on indefinite leave and his wife seems headed for the door – as he searches for happiness.

Writer, playwright, filmmaker, journalist, musician, and devoted sports fan Dave Bidini is the author of nine books. As a weekly columnist for the National Post he has received numerous National Magazine Awards, and his film The Hockey Nomad won a Gemini Award for Best Documentary. Bidini presents Home and Away, an uplifting tale of travelling with Homeless Team Canada as they compete for the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia.

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall captured the attention of the Canadian literary community with his first book, Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown, an account of the year he spent living with the homeless in Toronto’s infamous Tent City. He currently teaches writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Bishop-Stall presents his debut novel, Ghosted, a harrowing and darkly funny look at city life through the eyes of a young man on the brink.

Giles Blunt is the author of the British Crime Writers’ Macallan Silver Dagger-winning Forty Words for Sorrow; the Arthur Ellis Award-winning A Delicate Storm; Blackfly Season; By the Time You Read This; and the national bestseller Breaking Lorca. He has also written scripts for Law & Order, Street Legal and Night Heat. Blunt’s Crime Machine, the fifth installment in the John Cardinal mystery series, focuses on Cardinal’s investigation into the deaths of two Russian travellers at Algonquin Bay.

Dionne Brand’s previous poetry collections include Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and Trillium Book Award; thirsty, winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; and Inventory. In 2006, Brand was awarded the prestigious Harbourfront Festival Prize, and in 2009 was named Toronto’s Poet Laureate. She presents Ossuaries, a single poem about the bones of fading cultures and ideas, and about the living museums of spectacle where these bones are found.

Ian Brown is a feature writer for the Globe and Mail, the anchor of TVO’s documentary series Human Edge and The View from Here, the author of two previous books, Freewheeling and Man Overboard, and editor of the anthology What I Meant to Say: The Private Lives of Men. His reporting and writing have won more than a dozen national magazine and newspaper awards. Brown presents his Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction and Trillium Book Award-winning The Boy in the Moon, a deeply touching account of his son’s rare genetic mutation.

Charles Burns’ work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman’s Raw magazine in the mid-1980s. He has illustrated covers for Time, the New Yorker, and New York Times Magazine, among others. In 2005, his graphic novel Black Hole, received the Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards, three of the cartooning industry's premier prizes. Drawing inspiration from such diverse influences as Hergé and William Burroughs, Burns’ latest book, X'ed Out, is a dazzling and dreamlike comic book masterpiece.

Kate Cassaday is the Associate Editor at CollinsCanada, an imprint of HarperCollins Canada, where she commissions, acquires and edits

Born in London, Ontario, Eleanor Catton (New Zealand/Canada) was raised in New Zealand. She currently lives in Iowa City, having won a Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship to study at the internationally renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Catton presents her multiple award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal. Set at an all-girls’ high school, it chronicles the aftermath of a sex scandal.

“The closest comparison might be Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, or even The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, but The Rehearsal stands alone…” – Globe and Mail

Trevor Cole is among the very few Canadian writers whose first two novels, Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life and The Fearsome Particles, have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award. Cole's first novel also garnered a place on the longlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Practical Jean, is a darkly humourous tale of an ordinary woman with the usual challenges of middle age who realizes her fondest wish is to protect her dearest friends from the indignities of aging and illness by killing them.

Michael Cunningham’s novel, The Hours, won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Paris Review. His latest book, By Nightfall, follows a happy urban couple whose lives are interrupted and turned upside down when a wayward family member pops up.