Calgary writer Marcello Di Cintio is the author of five books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades (winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize), Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense (another Calgary Book Prize winner) and, most recently, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers.

Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author of “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization.” The book has been translated into five languages, was a finalist for a PEN America award and a California Book Award, and spawned a TED talk.

Carly Lewis has been a freelance journalist since 2012. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, Wired, the Globe and Mail, New York Magazine, Elle, The Walrus, Maisonneuve, The Atlantic, Hazlitt, The Guardian and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor.

Eva has been a full time freelancer for the past fourteen years. Much of her work focuses on the environment, especially the intersection of wilderness and society.

Human rights activist, journalist and award-winning author Sally Armstrong has covered stories about women and girls in zones of conflict all over the world.

Mr. Brennan's winning submission was for the chapter What's in a Name?-1896, Ha Ling Finally Gets his Due Recognition, from his book, Romancing the Rockies, published by Fifth House Ltd., a Fitzhenry and Whiteside Company.