Mary Walsh created and starred in This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC’s wildly popular take on current affairs. The series earned her many of her numerous Gemini awards and showcased her dynamic range of characters, including the flagrantly outspoken ‘Marg Delahunty.’ Walsh wrote, produced and starred in the Gemini award winning series Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, which returned to CBC in 2017 as a feature length presentation called A Christmas Fury, with Walsh and the original cast reprising their roles. In 2017 she released her debut novel, a Canadian bestseller, Crying For The Moon, and in 2026 she released Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet: A Memoir in Pieces. She currently writes, directs and stars in The Missus Downstairs, for which she has been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards.

Among her many awards and doctorates, Mary is the recipient of the Order of Canada, the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts, and the CSA’s Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television acting.

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Betty Baxter was born in 1952 in Brooks, Alberta. Prior to turning thirty, she played Olympic volleyball and was one of the rare women to coach the sport internationally. She was a member of the National Advisory Council on Fitness and Amateur Sport (1977–79), a founder of Canadian Women & Sport (1981), and initiated the National Coaching School for Women (1987). Following her expulsion as Canada’s national coach in 1982, she became an outspoken activist for LGBTQ+ community and human rights. In 1993, she was the first open lesbian to seek federal office in Vancouver Centre, and in 2011 she was elected to her local school board, serving two terms. Her essay “Homophobia, Hypocrisy and Power Abuse” appeared in Playing It Forward 50 Years of Women and Sport in Canada, Second Story Press (2014) and she has published short non-fiction in online journals, Canadian Horse Journal and the anthology, Potato Soup Journal: Best of 2022.

She is grateful to live in xwésám (Roberts Creek, BC) on the unceded territories of the shíshálh people. She published her first book, the memoir Outspoken: A Journey from Olympic Athlete to Activist, in 2026.

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Janie Chang is a Globe and Mail bestselling author of historical fiction. Born in Taiwan, Chang has lived in the Philippines, Iran, Thailand, New Zealand, and Canada. Her novels often draw from family history and ancestral stories. She has a degree in computer science and is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio Program at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of Three Souls, Dragon Springs Road, The Library of Legends, and The Porcelain Moon; and co-author of the USA Today bestseller The Phoenix Crown, with Kate Quinn. Her latest book is The Fourth Princess.

Genevieve Graham is the USA TODAY and #1 bestselling author of thirteen novels, including On Isabella Street, The Secret Keeper, The Forgotten Home Child, Letters Across the Sea, Bluebird, and The Chambermaid’s Key. She is passionate about breathing life back into history through tales of love and adventure. She lives in Alberta. Visit her on X and Instagram @GenGrahamAuthor.

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Please join us to celebrate the inaugural shortlist for the Al and Eurithe Purdy BC Award for Excellence. Three outstanding authors from British Columbia will be on hand to speak about and read from their shortlisted works, discuss the joys and challenges of publishing in BC, and share insights about the writing life and their literary craft.

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Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection This Wound is a World. He has twice been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award—once in poetry for the debut and in non-fiction for his memoir, A History of My Brief Body. Both his works of fiction, A Minor Chorus and Coexistence, were national bestsellers. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

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Donna Morrissey is the author of the nationally bestselling memoir Pluck, which was a finalist for the Atlantic Book Awards’ Non-Fiction Award, and of seven acclaimed and bestselling novels, including the national bestseller Rage the Night. She won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Fiction for The Fortunate Brother; Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and The Deception of Livvy Higgs was a One Read pick for Nova Scotia in 2017. Her fiction has also won awards in the US and the UK, and has been translated into several languages. Born and raised in Newfoundland, she lives in Halifax.

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Terry Fallis grew up in Toronto and earned an engineering degree from McMaster University. Drawn to politics at an early age, he worked for cabinet ministers in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park. His first novel, The Best Laid Plans, began as a podcast, then was self-published, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, was re-published by McClelland & Stewart to great reviews, was crowned the 2011 winner of CBC’s Canada Reads as “the essential Canadian novel of the decade,” and was adapted as a CBC Television series and a stage musical. His next two novels, The High Road and Up and Down, were finalists for the Leacock Medal, and in 2015, he won the prize a second time, for his fourth book, No Relation. His other novels, Poles Apart (a Leacock Medal finalist), One Brother Shy, Albatross, Operation Angus, A New Season, and The Marionette, were all national bestsellers. A skilled public speaker, he lives in Toronto with his wife, and blogs on his website. Follow @TerryFallis on Twitter and subscribe to his newsletter on Substack.

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Robert Moor is the bestselling author of On Trails and In Trees, and was hailed by The Wall Street Journal as a “philosopher on foot.” Translated into more than a dozen languages, On Trails garnered the National Outdoor Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the William Saroyan International Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, New York magazine, Outside, Emergence, and n+1, among other publications. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.

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Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, sound and visual artists. She is the author of the poetry books sometimes, forest, Trauma Head, and serpentine loop and editor of the anthologies Against Death: 35 Essays on Living and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (with John Asfour) as well as nine anthologies from Thursdays Writing Collective, a program she founded with Downtown Eastside writers in 2008. Elee holds an MA in Hispanic Literature from University of British Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the recipient of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, Lina Chartrand Award for Social Justice and the Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. Her writing has been a finalist for the Souster Award, Kroetsch Award, bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, City of Vancouver Book Award and in the US for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and Montaigne Medal. Elee co-hosts the Whole Cloth reading series at University of British Columbia’s Green College with Dr. Bronwen Tate and also directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, an online international program pairing authors with mentors. She is the seventh Poet Laureate of Vancouver.

bronwyn preece is honoured to have the privilege of living on the unceded traditional territories of the L̓il̓wat7úl and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw Peoples in Whistler, BC. This awareness brings with it many levels of responsibility, humbleness, transparency and collaborative possibilities. She is a site-sensitive poetic-renegade and multi-disciplinary, community-engaged arts practitioner. She holds a PhD in Performance, along with a MA and BFA in Applied Theatre. She has taught and performed internationally. Her publications range from place-based children’s books, articles to artistic academic chapters. In addition to hiking beyond she is the author of knee deep in high water : riding the Muskwa-Kechika, expedition poems; Sea to Sky Alphabet; Gulf Islands Alphabet and the forthcoming Olive and Jasper, Canadian Rockies Alphabet and My Happy Hiking Trails, all with Simply Read Books. All of her artistic and educational work aims towards cultivating place-based awarenesses and small acts of reconciliatory repair. bronwyn is an avid, solo, backcountry backpacker and hiker who writes on the trail. She has the word ‘gratitude’ tattooed on her arm.

Megan Cole is an artist of too many projects. She’s an amateur drummer, dabbler in alternative photography, fibre artist, and writer. She believes she has one of the best jobs as the Executive Director for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Her role includes hosting and producing a weekly podcast, and she’s interviewed authors such as Billy-Ray Belcourt, Michelle Good, Joel Bakan, and more. Megan lives in qathet on the territory of the Tla’amin Nation.

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Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson is a writer living in Toronto. His novella, The Man Who Went Down Under, won the Black Orchid Novella Award and the Crime Writers of Canada Best Novella Award. His first novel, The Road to Heaven, was nominated for an Edgar Award and a Shamus Award. The second book in the Patrick Bird Mystery Series, Opposite Sully’s Gym, was published in March 2026.

Sam Wiebe is the author of the bestselling Ocean Drive as well as the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Sunset and Jericho and The Last Exile. Guns Across the River is the latest in the series. His work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award, the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus and City of Vancouver book prizes. The Last Exile is a finalist for the 2026 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Wiebe lives in New Westminster, BC.

Antonio Michael Downing is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy and children’s book, Stars in My Crown. Antonio Michael is the current host of the CBC Radio program The Next Chapter where he discusses books with authors and columnists. He spends his time writing books, singing songs, and trying to make his grandma proud. Black Cherokee is his debut novel.

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