WHEN WORDS COLLIDE
  • Home
  • Festival
    • 2026 FEATURED LINEUP >
      • Featured Author Terry Brooks
      • Featured Author Kevin McDonald
      • Special Guests
      • Guest Agents
    • Registration
    • Accommodation
    • VISIT CALGARY
    • Merchant Room
    • 2025
    • 2024
  • Programs & Events
    • Saturday Night Showcase
    • War of the Words Writing Competition >
      • Wars of the Words 2026
      • Wars of the Words 2025
    • Podcasts
  • Get Involved
    • Apply to be a Speaker
    • Become a Sponsor
    • Volunteer
  • Contact

Meet our 2025 Lineup

Featured authors

Eden Robinson  |  Stephen Graham Jones

Special guests

Bradley Somer  |  Finnian Burnett  |  Kelley Armstrong  |  Kelly Siskind
​Lee Edward Födi  |  Wakefield Brewster

Guest agents

Carolyn Forde  |  Jennifer Chevais  |  Naomi Davis

featured authors

Picture

EDEN ROBINSON

Eden Robinson is an award-winning Indigenous writer from Canada. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. Eden is the author of the short story collection Traplines (1995). Traplines won the Winifred Holtby Prize for best first work of fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book. Her second book Monkey Beach (2000), a novel, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Monkey Beach was awarded with the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Eden’s third novel, Blood Sports, was published in 2006 and revisits characters from Traplines.

Eden recently finished writing the Trickster-trilogy: Son of a Trickster (2017), Trickster Drift (2018) and, Return of the Trickster (2021) all published by Knopf Canada. Son of a Trickster was shortlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Moreover, Son of a Trickster was a finalist of the 2020 edition of Canada Reads. Trickster Drift won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2019.

Monkey Bach is required reading in many Canadian schools and universities. It has been in print since its publication with over 100,000 copies in print. Monkey Beach is also a set text at the University of Glasgow for the Canadian Literature course offered by Prof Faye Hammill.

​In addition, Eden’s work has been adapted to the screen. Son of a Trickster is adapted into a television series called Trickster and ran on CBC Television and the CW in 2020. Her novel, Monkey Beach has been turned into a film of the same name. The film Monkey Beach is directed by Loretta Todd and premiered at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival in September 2020.
Picture

Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of some thirty novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Most recent are The Angel of Indian Lake,  I Was a Teenage Slasher, and the ongoing Earthdivers. Up before too long are True Believers and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.

special guests

Picture

Bradley SomeR

Bradley Somer’s novels have been published in over twenty countries, translated into several languages, and produced in many print, digital, and audio formats. A few have even been optioned for screen. His newest, WE ARE ALL OF US LEFT BEHIND, will be released in the Fall of 2025.
He is the author of three previous novels: EXTINCTION (Blackstone Publishing & HarperCollins UK, 2022),  FISHBOWL (St. Martin’s Press & Penguin Random House UK, 2015), and IMPERFECTIONS (Nightwood Editions, 2012). He has also written a ton of short fiction, which has appeared in literary journals, reviews, and anthologies over the past twenty years.

​Bradley holds degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology, where his studies focused on paleoenvironments and human prehistory in North America. He lives with his husband at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Between sitting for hours reading and chronic bouts of writing, he enjoys snowshoeing and hiking the outdoors.
Picture

Finnian Burnett

Finnian Burnett writes at the intersection of identities of health, mental illness, the human body, and queer joy. They are a recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, a 2023 CBC nonfiction contest finalist, and a 2024 Pushcart nominee. Finnian's recent flash collection, The Price of Cookies, is available through Off Topic Publishing. 

​
Finn holds a doctoral degree in English Pedagogy, particularly using story-based pedagogy to create equity in multicultural classrooms. Their work appears in Blank Spaces Magazine, Reflex Press, The Daily Sci-Fi, Pulp Literature, and more. 
Picture

Kelley Armstrong

​Armstrong is the author of the "Rip Through Time" and “Haven’s Rock" mystery series. Past works include the Otherworld urban fantasy series, the Rockton mystery series, the Stitch in Time time-travel series, the Cainsville gothic mystery series, the Nadia Stafford mystery trilogy, the Darkest Powers & Darkness Rising teen paranormal series, the Age of Legends teen fantasy series and the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying middle-grade fantasy series.
Picture

Kelly Siskind

Kelly Siskind is a contemporary romance and rom-com author dedicated to all things happily ever after. She’s a Golden Heart finalist, and she won the New Adult Romance of the Year from Under the Covers Book Blog. Her steamy rom-com, The Knockout Rule, was an Apple Books Best Book of the Month, and New Orleans Rush was included on Bussle’s 2019 Dreamy Romance Novels to Read this Spring list.
 
Her work has been translated and sold in Italy, Germany, and Poland. She also works as a freelance developmental editor, helping writers edit their books to pitch agents and get book deals, as well as to self-publish their novels. Her personal experience in the traditional and self-publishing worlds has provided her with an informed bird’s-eye-view of the ever-changing publishing landscape, and she gets ridiculously excited to help writers reach their goals.
 
When not hunkered down writing or editing, you’ll find Kelly out hiking or skiing or mountain biking in the Canadian Rockies. She loves singing while driving, looks awful in yellow, and is known for spilling wine at parties. Website: https://www.kellysiskind.com
Picture

​Lee Edward Födi

Lee Edward Födi is an author, illustrator, and specialized arts educator—or, as he likes to think of himself, a daydreaming expert. He has written several books for children, including Spell Sweeper, The Secret of Zoone, and the Kendra Kandlestar series. He has delivered presentations, craft workshops, and residencies to kids in Canada, the US, Korea, China, and Thailand. During his free time, he’s a traveler, adventurer, and maker of dragon eggs. He especially loves to visit exotic places where he can lose myself (sometimes literally!) in tombs, mazes, castles, and crypts. Lee lives in North Vancouver, BC, with his wife and son on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and Musqueam Nations. www.leefodi.com
Picture

Wakefield Brewster

Wakefield Brewster stepped onto his first stage as a Poet and Spoken Word Artist, January 1999. He's now known as one of Canada’s most powerful Professional Performance Poets.
 
Wakefield became the sixth Poet Laureate of Calgary in 2022, first Black Poet Laureate of Calgary, ever. During National Poetry Month in April 2024, after a quarter-century of Professional Performance Poetry, Wakefield released his first written Poetry collection titled: WakeWord (Frontenac House)
 
For more about Wakefield and his Lyrical Life, please visit: http://wakefieldbrewster.com

Guest Agents

Picture

Carolyn Forde
Transatlantic Agency

Previous to joining Transatlantic Agency in 2019, where she is now Senior Agent and Partner, Carolyn was a literary agent and International Rights Director at another agency for 14 years.
Carolyn attends the London Book Fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair and, more recently, the Bologna Book Fair. She also travels to New York and LA regularly, promoting her authors and their work.
She represents authors who have won or been nominated for many awards and distinctions including but not limited to the following: Governor General’s Award, Scotiabank Giller Prize, RBC Taylor Prize, Writers Trust Hilary Weston Award, Trillium Book Award, Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction, BC National Book Award, Toronto Book Award, Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award, Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, Speakers Award, Toronto Heritage Book Award, Hugo Prix for Best Foreign Thriller (France), Kobo Emerging Writer Award, Arthur Ellis Awards, LAMDA Awards, Indigo author of the month, as well as many national and international bestsellers.

Carolyn is an active member of the literary community, having been a speaker or mentor at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, Muskoka Literary Festival, DarkLit Literary Festival, Word on the Street, Writers Group of Durham, Ontario Writers’ Conference, Willamette Writers Conference, Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, Thrillerfest, Diaspora Dialogues and the Canadian Authors Association and is a founding member and current President of the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents (PACLA), she is also Co-chair of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ International Visitor Committee.
​
Carolyn has lived and worked in Japan, Mexico and the Czech Republic and is a dual citizen of Canada and the UK.
Picture

Jennifer Chevais
The Rights Factory

Jennifer Chevais is a generalist with a strong interest in commercial horror, speculative fiction, as well as children’s fiction and “just the right fit” nonfiction project. As a generalist she is primarily drawn to character-driven stories peopled by characters so strong they'll either break your heart or pull it right out of your body.

Interested in: 
Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Thriller
Picture

Naomi Davis
Book Ends Literary Agency

​Authors have always been Naomi Davis's superheroes. Growing up in Minnesota, they spent their elementary years pretending they were every character in every book they read. Naomi has a passion for helping authors develop stakes, voice immersion, and tension to a story's highest possible potential, and often tweets about strategies for accomplishing those goals on their Twitter. They seek dynamic, character-driven adult and young adult titles in fantasy, sci-fi, and romance, and represent select middle grade and picture book authors. Naomi also has an interest in stories that blend the fantastic with the realistic, and is eager for books that cross between women's fiction and fantasy, or contemporary fiction and sci fi or fantasy. Naomi is particularly passionate about finding new fantasy and sci-fi settings with unique magical structures that surprise the reader and change the rules readers associate with those worlds. They write powerful, intricate characters in explosive SFF settings. Naomi is nonbinary and happy with either pronoun, she/her or they/them.​
JUMP TO THE TOP

CONTACT US

[email protected]
403.264.4730

our policies

Accessibility Policy

Alexandra writers centre society

Our Website
Donate
  • Home
  • Festival
    • 2026 FEATURED LINEUP >
      • Featured Author Terry Brooks
      • Featured Author Kevin McDonald
      • Special Guests
      • Guest Agents
    • Registration
    • Accommodation
    • VISIT CALGARY
    • Merchant Room
    • 2025
    • 2024
  • Programs & Events
    • Saturday Night Showcase
    • War of the Words Writing Competition >
      • Wars of the Words 2026
      • Wars of the Words 2025
    • Podcasts
  • Get Involved
    • Apply to be a Speaker
    • Become a Sponsor
    • Volunteer
  • Contact