Genevieve Farrell is an arts administrator, curator, and artist with a background in visual arts and cultural studies. She has worked with organizations across Canada, including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts’ Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX), The Esplanade Art & Heritage Centre, The School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba, FLUX Gallery, and the ALDO Group in Montreal. Her experience spans exhibition development, publications, archival projects, educational programming, and community events—all aimed at deepening public engagement with the arts. 

She is currently the Program Manager of Cultural Leadership at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she supports the design and delivery of programs that foster dialogue, collaboration, and innovation in the cultural sector. Guided by values of cross-cultural exchange, intergenerational learning, and making space for diverse voices, Genevieve is committed to building more inclusive and imaginative cultural ecosystems. 

Outside of work, Genevieve spends her time working in drawing, printmaking and clay. She also enjoys reading and cooking, and spending time with family and friends.

Geneviève Cimon brings over 20 years of experience in executive leadership, collaboration, and mentorship to her role as Director of Cultural Leadership at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her career has spanned Canada’s leading performing arts institutions, public and private funding bodies, and community-driven cultural initiatives—from her long-standing tenure as Senior Director of Learning and Community Engagement at the National Arts Centre to her recent leadership of a dynamic consultancy supporting arts and culture organizations across the sector. 

Geneviève’s expertise includes multi-disciplinary programming, arts education, artist training, and national and international partnerships. She has led collaborative initiatives with Indigenous leaders in rural and remote communities and worked extensively with the disability community to advance accessibility and inclusive design. Her leadership in executive coaching, strategic planning, and grant-making is grounded in a belief that the arts can be a powerful force for social change. 

She holds an MBA in Executive Leadership from McGill/HEC, where her research explored innovation through cross-sectoral collaboration. A passionate advocate for equitable access to health care and arts engagement, Geneviève has served as Chair of Ottawa’s Centretown Community Health Centre and Board member of Propeller Dance and currently sits on the Advisory Board of the Global Leaders Institute’s Arts Innovation MBA, mentoring emerging cultural leaders around the world. She is also an External Research Fellow at Carleton University’s Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society. 

Outside of her professional life, Geneviève finds joy in playing tennis (enthusiastically, if not expertly), cross-country skiing, mystery novels, and cooking.  She shares a love of the outdoors with her partner, two sons, and their dog, Buckwheat

Alison Callahan began her publishing career as a reader for the fiction editors at The New Yorker and The Atlantic. After attending the Radcliffe Publishing Course, she worked at International Creative Management, HarperCollins, and Knopf Doubleday. In 2014, she joined Simon & Schuster, where she is currently Vice President and Executive Editor. In 2015, she helped launch the literary imprint Scout Press with Ruth Ware’s debut, In a Dark, Dark Wood. Along the way, the authors Alison has edited include Amy Schumer, Stanley Tucci, Erin Morgenstern, Ann Patchett, Liane Moriarty, America Ferrera, Iain Reid, Armistead Maupin, Daniel Alarcon, and Peter Straub, among many others. Alison’s interests include literary fiction with ambitious, cutting edge, and inventive plotlines and characters. She also enjoys stylistic and visionary stories that are just left of center, domestic dramas, fish out of water stories, and books that take readers outside of their comfort zones and perhaps cause them to view the world in a different way. Alison likes to keep her feet on the ground and her head in the clouds.

January Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer and media producer. She lives on her home territory of Six Nations of the Grand River where she operates Ojistoh Publishing and Productions. January combines her literary talents with her passion for media making to produce audio and video poetry. Her video poem Ego of a Nation won Best Music Video at the American Indian International Film Festival 2020 and her audio work The Battle Within won Best Experimental Audio with imagineNative International Film and Media Festival 2021. She is a literary mentor with Audible, the Indigenous Writers Circle Program since 2022. January wrote a 10-episode comedy series NDNs on the Airwaves (found on the Ojistoh youtube channel) and her play Blood Sport, a comedy about the pretendian crisis in Indian Country has received numerous stage readings and was published by Turtle’s Back Publishing in 2023.

Dan Wells, bookseller and publisher, is the founder at Biblioasis. Started in 1998 as a used and rare bookstore in Windsor, Ontario, it's since gone through various manifestations, turning into a new bookstore and, in 2004, a literary press.  Since that time, Biblioasis has published over 450 titles across a wide range of genres and disciplines: poetry, fiction, literary and cultural criticism, belle lettres, history, memoir, biography, and philosophy, many of which have been nominated or won some of the leading prizes in Canada and around the world, including the Booker and International Booker, the Folio, the Giller, Governor's General, and various Writer's Trust Prizes. Quill and Quire, on their tenth anniversary, called them "the leading publisher of the unpublishable." In addition to books, Biblioasis also publishes CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries.  Dan lives in Windsor, Ontario, with his wife and children.

Sawako Nakayasu is an artist working with language, performance, and translation – separately and combined. Recent books include Pink Waves (Omnidawn, 2023), a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker award, Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From (Wave Books, 2020) and the pamphlet, Say Translation Is Art (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020). Translations include The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa (Modern Library, 2020), as well as Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals (Rogue Factorial, 2011), a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry. Settle Her, which was written on the #1 bus line in Providence on Thanksgiving Day of 2017 on the occasion of her cutting ties with normative Thanksgiving celebrations, is forthcoming from Solid Objects. She teaches poetry, translation, and interdisciplinary art in the Literary Arts department at Brown University.

Described by the Toronto Star as “one of Toronto’s most exciting playwrights,” Michael Ross Albert is a Dora Award-nominated writer whose work has been staged across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Production credits include The Bidding War (Crow's Theatre), Beautiful Renegades (Peggy Baker Dance Projects), When I’m Gone (Mountain Movers Theatre Company), Two Minutes to Midnight (The Assembly Theatre), Miss (Unit 102), and Tough Jews (Dora Award nomination, Outstanding New Play). Michael's work has been presented in multiple Fringe festivals, including Edinburgh, Brighton, and FringeNYC. Five of his plays were staged in the Toronto Fringe Festival, including: The Huns, Anywhere (both: Patron’s Pick and Best of Fringe), and most recently, Good Old Days. He is currently working on new plays commissioned by the Stratford Festival, the Blyth Festival, and Vertigo Theatre, as well as new works supported by Soulpepper Theatre and the Vault Creation Lab. 

Photo by Shaun Benson