NAOMI KLEIN is an award-winning journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of seminal books such as Doppelganger, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, and On Fire. Naomi has dedicated her career to offering clarity and building solidarity on the most pressing social issues, and to date, her books have been published in over 35 languages worldwide. In her latest book, the NYT bestseller Doppelganger, she explores what she calls the “Mirror World”: our current landscape of doubles and confusion born of misinformation, political polarization, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Part riveting memoir, part brilliant social analysis, this TIME Best Non-Fiction Book begins by grappling with Naomi’s own doppelganger and unfolds into a larger exploration of what it means to be human today. Through her body of work, Naomi offers us not only a deeper understanding of the crises we face, but also a path towards a more hopeful future.

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence: Lectures and Writings, was published by Sweden’s Timglaset Editions, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has received multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to Albertan literature and is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award.’ He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, has served as poet laureate of both Calgary and Banff, and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Pharis and Jason Romero are pure craftspeople and top-notch musicians. They've won four Juno awards and seven Canadian Folk Music Awards, with naturally fluid voices and great sounding instruments telling sparks of life stories. From small-town life to wonder at the bigger things, everything is wrapped around a sense of joy and ease that comes from this small-town renaissance couple. They live with their two kids in the wilderness town of Horsefly, BC, where they also work as renowned banjo builders J. Romero Banjos. Their newest record, Tell ‘Em You Were Gold, puts their sublime banjos in the forefront of new and old songs released on venerable folk label Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2022. It was made in an old barn Pharis & Jason spent years slowly restoring, and recorded in six days by a wood stove under northern lights with friends on bass, fiddle, mandolin and pedal steel. It is a testament to the significance of their work as both musicians and builders.

Rebecca Belmore is a member of Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe). Her works are rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities and make evocative connections between bodies, land and language.

A major retrospective of Rebecca Belmore’s work, prepared by the Art Gallery of Ontario, toured Canada in 2018-19. Her group exhibitions include: Whitney Biennial (2022); dOCUMENTA 14 (2017), Athens, Greece; Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Niigata Prefecture, Japan (2015); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Art Museum, New York (2007); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON (1992); and Creation or Death: We Will Win, Havana Biennial, Cuba (1991).

Belmore was a recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2016 for her outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada, Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2013, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2009, and Honorary Doctorates from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2005, Emily Carr University in 2018, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2019 and the Université Laval in 2021.
 

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe independent curator, image and word warrior, and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, Canada. Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of Indigenous curators, writers and artists that last took place at Venice Biennale. She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her co-authored book, Moving the Museum which chronicles some of her groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario as the inaugural Curator of Indigenous Art. She has curated survey, group, and retrospective exhibitions including: Robert Houle: Red is Beautiful (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, Washington); Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental (touring Canada and the U.S.) and Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971 - 1989 (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto). She received her M.A. in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto where she has also taught graduate courses. She will be the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the Ph.D. Program in Art History at CUNY in the Graduate Department of Art History in 2025. Nanibush has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history, feminism and sexuality.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.

A recording artist over the span of twenty-two years, Chacon has appeared on more than eighty releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored over three hundred high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022), and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

His solo artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections.