Marina Rubin was born in Vinnitsa, Ukraine and immigrated to the United States in 1989. She attended Pace University on a Writing Scholarship from United Federation of Teachers and graduated with a Degree in Psychology and minor in Women’s Studies. Her first chapbook ‘Ode to Hotels’ (2002) was followed by ‘Once’ (2004) and ‘Logic’ (2007). Marina Rubin’s work has appeared in over eighty magazines and anthologies. She is an associate editor of Mudfish. Tribeca’s literary and art magazine, and a 2013 recipient of COJECO Blueprint Fellowship.

Youval Shimoni was born in Jerusalem in 1955. He studied cinema at Tel Aviv University and first began publishing in 1990. Shimoni is a senior editor at the Am Oved Publishing House and has taught creative writing at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Bar Ilan University. He has been awarded the Bernstein Prize (2001), the Prime Minister’s Prize (2005) and both the Brenner Prize (2015) and the Newman Prize (2016) for The Salt Line.

Jodie Cain Smith is a graduate of the University of South Alabama and Northern Michigan University because earning a degree on both the southern and northern border happened by pure chance and a bit of study. She is the author of The Woods at Barlow Bend, her debut novel based on the true story of her grandmother’s tumultuous adolescence in rural Alabama. Her short works have appeared in The Petigru Review, Pieces Anthology, and Chicken Soup for the Military Spouse’s Soul. When not creating fictional worlds on her laptop, Jodie hangs out with her long-suffering husband and the most precious boy ever created. Seriously, the kid is amazing, and the husband puts up with a lot.

Alan Winnikoff is the author of the 2017 novella The Weekend, which was praised by reviewers, who called it “smooth,” “reflective” and “a stunning picture of doubt, realization, and the what-ifs of love.”

A native of Los Angeles, Winnikoff graduated with honors from The Colorado College. After many years in corporate public relations, where he worked for several high-profile media companies, he started his own Midtown Manhattan-based PR firm in 2003.

Winnikoff lives in suburban New York with his wife, Pamela Kroll, their sons DJ and Stephen, and Cedar, DJ’s beloved and ever reliable autism service dog.

Martin Myers is the author of four novels, The Assignment, Frigate, Izzy Manheim’s Reunion, and The Secret Viking. With comparisons to some of this past centuries’ greatest humourists including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Monty Python, Myers richly inventive writing is sure to make readers laugh out loud followed by a quizzical moment where they question their own morals, ethics, and reality. His writing has been glowingly reviewed throughout North America and Britain by publications such as The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Toronto Star, and The Times of London Literary Supplement.

Madeleine White was born in Germany, with roots in Canada and the UK. Her 25 year career has spanned journalism, teaching, educational technology and publishing. As a publisher she has created national and international web and print magazines aimed at creating a voice for those without one. A notable example of this is the successful Nina-Iraq, a project that she worked on with the World Bank to reach out to Iraqi women everywhere.

These days, Madeleine is an editor at WriteOn magazine and a ‘storyteller’ consultant, working with educational technology companies and international development partners to connect diverse cultural, geographical and digital communities. Her debut novel, Mother of Floods, has been inspired by the growing belief that fiction is often more powerful than factual journalism in opening us up to truth.

Madeleine is married with three children and lives in Broadstairs, a small coastal town in England.

Ben Berman Ghan is an author and editor from Toronto, finishing an HBA with a major in English Literature, and minors in Philosophy, and Writing and Rhetoric at The University of Toronto. His work has appeared in The Goose, The UC Review, Indigo Lit, Occulum Journal, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, South 85, Liquid Imagination, The Sweet Tree Review, The Spectatorial, The Trinity Review, Terse Literary Journal, The Strand, Intersections, and The White Wall Review. 

He has served as the Fiction Editor of The Spectatorial, and Associate Editor for The Goose. He is currently the editor of a book of non-fiction for Guernica Editions, Prose editor of Terse Journal, and Associate editor on The Hart House Review. His writing occurs in the place where the ideas of classic science fiction meet the interpersonal concerns of all literature.

Anton Piatigorsky is the author of two works of fiction, Al-Tounsi and The Iron Bridge, along with several plays and librettos. His works have twice won Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play. Other awards and short list nominations include The Siminovitch Prize for Theatre Protégé Award, The Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, and The Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Plays include Eternal Hydra, The Kabbalistic Psychoanalysis of Adam R. Tzaddik, Breath In Between, and The Offering. Piatigorsky wrote the libretto for Brian Current’s Airline Icarus, winner of a Juno Award for Best Classical Composition. He has received commissions, residencies and productions from the Stratford Festival of Canada, Soulpepper Theatre Company and others. Anton lives in Toronto.

Jared Marcel Pollen was born in Canada. He studied politics and literature at the University of Windsor and received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in NY. His work has appeared in The Millions, 3:AM Magazine, Salo Press and Political Animal, among others. He currently lives in Prague.

Marc Aubin is a fifth generation resident of Ottawa, Canada. Over the past two decades, he has been involved in community activism and historical research in Lowertown – Ottawa’s original French-Canadian neighbourhood. During this time, he has accumulated a set of stories about his community’s struggles and its unique identity.

Graeme Krupinski was born and raised in Toronto before living in Argentina and Chile. His poetry and non-fiction has been published in journals and newspapers in English and Spanish. Puerto Montt is his first novel.

Monica Duncan is a writer of literary fiction, musician, wife, and mother. Originally from Michigan, she finds herself continually drawn to the hidden richness of the places she comes from. Now living in Newburyport, Massachusetts, she is still at home, by the water.

Monica holds music degrees from Michigan State and Indiana University, and is active as a freelance musician and teacher in the Greater Boston area.

She’s pretty sure she’ll always be in love with the soundtrack from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, and has discovered that her favorite skill as a writer she learned from her life in music: Be a good listener.

Glen Paul Hammond was born in East York, Ontario, Canada. His interest in literature and history is reflected in publication credits that include contributions for both short fiction and Irish history in Cantos Cadre magazine and The Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society. In 2008, his educational book The Literary Detective was published by Mosaic Press and, most recently, he has become a regular contributor to Political Animal Magazine. He lives with his wife, two sons and German Shorthaired Pointer in the Toronto area.