READING: Adler-Beléndez, Cleave, Malla, Sloan, Watkins

Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez’s first book, Soy (I am), was published when he was just 12 years old. His work has received an honourable mention for the Premio Nacional de la Juventud (National Prize for the Youth) and has twice been granted a six-month scholarship by the FONCA (the National Institute for Support of the Arts). Adler-Beléndez has been battling cerebral palsy since birth and offers workshops in Mexico and the USA on different aspects of disability and how to use it as a creative force. Adler-Beléndez’s latest book, Love on Wheels, deals with coming to grips with the richness and complexities of life in a wheelchair.

Bert Archer is a writer for the Toronto Star, Toronto Life, Yonge Street Media and the Toronto Standard. He was a full-time book reviewer and literary journalist in Canada and the USA for the better part of a decade. He has written one book and contributed to half a dozen others.

Chris Cleave is a columnist for The Guardian. His first novel, Incendiary, was published in 20 countries, won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize. His second novel, Little Bee,, was a Canadian and New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Cleave’s most recent book, Gold, tells the story of Zoe and Kate, friends and athletic rivals in elite cycling, as they compete against each other for the last remaining spot on the Olympic team.

Pasha Malla’s first collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method, was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won both the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillium Book Award. A frequent contributor to The Walrus, Globe and Mail and CBC Radio, he is also the winner of an Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction, two National Magazine Awards for humour writing and has twice had stories included in the Journey Prize Stories. Malla's novel People Park explores the variety of characters that make up an island community plunged into a series of unnatural disasters.

Robin Sloan is a writer and media inventor in San Francisco. He studied economics at Michigan State University, where he co-founded a literary magazine called Oats, has since worked at Poynter, Current TV and Twitter, and currently collaborates on Snarkmarket, a blog. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sloan’s debut novel which began as a short story on his website, is a gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure and the secret to eternal life.

Born in Death Valley and raised in the Nevada desert, Claire Vaye Watkins’ work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, One Story, Ploughshares and Glimmer Train. She teaches creative writing at Bucknell University and the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference and is the co-director of a non-profit creative writing camp for rural Nevadans. Watkins presents Battleborn, a collection of 10 short stories reimagining the mythology of the American West. The stories of hardship and violence, eroticism and emotion range from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel.