Charlotte Brussee was generously supported by the Maria Francisca Josepha Brouwer Fund for Dutch Artists
 

“She was born for the stage”; as such commented the jury at her final exam at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Charlotte Brussee (1999) was admitted to the Sweelinck Academy of the Conservatory of Amsterdam in 2014, as well as being principal cellist in the string ensemble “Fancy Fiddlers” of Coosje Wijzenbeek for exceptionally gifted young string players. At this conservatory she had lessons with a.o. Monique Bartels and Maarten Mostert, and most recently with Michael Stirling, with whom she completed her Bachelor studies. Subsequently she continued her (master) studies at the Hochschüle für Musik Detmold with Xenia Jankovic, and currently at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the class of Raphaël Pidoux.

Charlotte was prize winner at a.o. the Britten Cello Competition and the Prinses Christina Competition and had masterclasses with among others Pieter Wispelwey, Jérôme Pernóo, Gregor Horsch, Dmitri Ferschtmann, Gary Hoffman, Reinhard Latzko, Xenia Jankovic, Leonid Gorokhov, Emanuelle Bertrand, Véronique Marin and Astrig Siranossian. She played solo with orchestras including Amsterdam Sinfonietta, and played chamber music with Candida Thompson, Leonid Gorokhov, Maja Bogdanovic, Daniel Rowland, Anna Fedorova, Dana Zemtsov and members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.  Moreover, she played in ensembles such as Cello Octet Amsterdam, Kamerata Zuid, and as principal cellist of the Ricciotti Ensemble. In the summer of 2025, she was selected as principal cellist of the symphony orchestra of Stellenbosch International Music Festival in South Africa.

At present, she is affiliated as “Young Artist” with Daniel Rowland’s International Stift Festival, and recently won the audition for cellist in Dutch orchestra collective Pynarello. To her great delight, Charlotte plays with a rare Radrizzani cello from 1910, generously on loan to her by The Netherlands Musical Instruments Foundation. Her bow was made around 1900 by Frech master bowmaker Charles Nicholas Bazin, in the atelier of Peccatte.
 

Will Evans is an award-winning publisher, writer, translator, bookstore founder, professor, and literary arts advocate. In 2013, he founded Deep Vellum, a nonprofit publishing house and bookstore, dedicated to bringing the world into conversation through literature by publishing the world’s vital stories by underrepresented writers, and cultivating a lifelong love of reading through creative programming and outspoken advocacy for the literary arts. He has been awarded CLMP's Golden Colophon Award for Paradigm Independent Publishing, accepted to the Texas Institute of Letters, named a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture, and was knighted by France as a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. He received BA degrees in History and Russian Literature from Emory University, and an MA in Russian Culture from Duke University. His translation of Russian writer Oleg Kashin's novel Fardwor, Russia: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin was published by Restless Books in 2016. He teaches courses on Publishing and World Literature at the University of Texas at Dallas and SMU.

Dr. Rachael Allen is the author of Kingdomland, which was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and God Complex, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, both published by Faber. She works as an editor for Fitzcarraldo Editions and a Senior Lecturer for Queen Mary University.

Carine Abouseif is a senior editor at The Walrus. She edits essays, features, and investigations. She has handled pieces on AI, allegations of racism at a top law school, and the disappearance of two children in Nova Scotia. In 2026, a long-form piece she edited on the aftermath of a death at the University of Toronto won a National Magazine Award. Prior to her time at The Walrus, Carine worked as a substantive editor at The Globe and Mail. Her own writing focuses on health and culture and has been featured in The Walrus, The Globe, Broadview and elsewhere. She is also a former writing instructor at U of T. Her first name is pronounced Kah-reen.

Vancouver-based Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of the bestseller Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, winner of the 2013 Toronto Book Award and a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone) won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for Nonfiction. His third book of nonfiction, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From, was published in 2021 and was named a Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books. His work mixes personal narrative with geopolitics and field reporting from, to date, 20 countries. He is a two-time nominee for Canada’s National Magazine Awards in the column category, winning the Gold Medal in 2019. More recently, he wrote and produced a number of documentaries for CBC’s IDEAS on subjects as diverse as the Queen of Sheba, Victorian writer Wilkie Collins and the history of port cities. He holds a PhD in English and is currently the director of the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia.

An alumnus of the 2009 Banff Centre Literary Journalism Program, Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers, and, most recently, Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers. His books have been honoured with the Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for Political Writing, three W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prizes, and three Alberta Literary Awards – among other accolades. In addition to his books, Di Cintio has placed stories in publications such as Canadian Geographic, Afar, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and The Walrus. He has served as a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary, the Calgary Public Library and the Palestine Writing Workshop. Di Cintio has also taught nonfiction writing to students ranging from gifted teens to former sex workers to young journalists in Gaza. He lives in Calgary.

Trained as a scientist, Dr. Monica Kidd has been an award-winning journalist for thirty years. She has worked as a staff reporter for CBC Radio and as a freelance writer, with a special emphasis on health and the environment. Her recent magazine work has appeared in The Walrus, Canadian Geographic and Alberta Views. She’s published eight books of nonfiction, fiction and fiction, has written and directed short films, including the animation The Storm, for the National Film Board in 2021, and holds graduate degrees in both biology and creative nonfiction. She lives in Calgary, where she also works as a family physician and as an associate humanities editor for The Canadian Medical Association Journal. Her ninth book, Holding Ground: The World’s Eroding Coastlines is forthcoming from Harper Collins Canada in 2027.

Jonathan Huard was generously supported by the Helen Graham Artist Award

Born in Rimouski, Qc, Jonathan Huard holds a bachelor’s degree in percussion from the Rimouski Conservatory of Music, a master’s degree with distinction from the Quebec Conservatory of Music, and an Advanced Certificate in Performance from the University of Toronto. Passionate about contemporary music, improvisation, and orchestral music, he actively pursues these interests by collaborating with several specialized ensembles in Canada, including GGRIL (Rimouski), the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, and Esprit Orchestra (Toronto). Jonathan has participated in the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the So Percussion Summer Institute, and several competitions, including the Prix d’Europe and the Canadian Music Competition, where he twice won first prize in percussion. In 2026, he was awarded Fourth Prize, Prix de l’Académie de musique du Québec, and Prix du Centre de musique canadienne au Québec at the Prix d’Europe Competition. In recognition of his artistic quality, advanced playing skills, and determination to pursue his career, Jonathan has received the Award of Excellence from the Quebec City Symphony Orchestra Foundation.

He is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Charles Settle’s studio. His career is marked by a constant pursuit of artistic excellence, great musical versatility, and a sustained interest in contemporary composition.
 

Katy Bohinc is a poet, publisher, and data scientist. She is author of Dear Alain (Tender Buttons Press, 2014), Trinity Star Trinity (Scarlet Imprint, 2017), and Scorpio (Miami University Press, 2018). From 2013-2020 she collaborated on the esteemed Tender Buttons Press with Lee Ann Brown. Tender Buttons Press published several landmark poetry texts, from Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets to Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt-Ups. A quarter of Tender Buttons Press authors have won Guggenheim Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Currently Katy is founder & CEO of THE RATIO, a company that studies astrology with data science. Most recently, Katy was first editor on De Kai’s RAISING AI (MIT Press, 2025), which was selected by JPMorgan as one of fourteen 2025 summer reading titles. LitHub said: “Fascinating and mercifully comprehensible to layreaders, Raising AI situates humans as the adults in the room and explores the ways in which we can and should engage with our “artificial children.” Why not give your dread a little break?”

Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short story writer and essayist. Her bestselling novels include Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, When We Lost Our Heads and Valentine in Montreal. She has won numerous prizes for her books, including Canada Reads, the Danuta Gleed Award and the Hugh Maclennan Prize. She has also been shortlisted for, among others, the Governor General Award, the Women’s Prize, and the Giller Prize. She has contributed to numerous publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Globe and Mail. Born and raised in Montreal, she lives there today.