Diversity in Fiction: Seeing Ourselves and Each Other in Stories

Lineup

• More details about Trinity Cunningham

  Trinity Cunningham

  There was never a time that Trinity hasn't loved writing. Between writing songs, journaling, filling out a simple form, or trying her hand at screenwriting—give her a pen and she's in her element. In her younger years, movies and books were her escape. And when that was no longer enough, she would escape into her own imagination and the worlds she’d envisioned. When her stories could no longer be contained by her thoughts alone, she began writing them down. Hundreds of pages of idea excerpts littered her many notebooks. When that still wasn't enough, she went on to pursue screenwriting and storytelling courses, and learned how to develop her ideas into more. After a brief break from the writing world, she travelled, married, and started a family, then in 2020, was inspired once more to take her old ideas and flesh them out fully into novels. Since then, she's found her passion, delving into these fictional worlds and bringing to life new settings and characters.

• More details about Joanna Lilley

  Joanna Lilley

  Joanna Lilley is a British-Canadian poet and novelist living in Whitehorse, Yukon. Her most recent poetry collection, Three Pieces of Sea, is forthcoming in 2026. Joanna is the author of Endlings, a collection of poems about extinct animals which won the 2021 Fred Kerner Book Award. Her other poetry books are If There Were Roads and The Fleece Era, which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award, and she’s also the author of a novel Worry Stones, which was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and a short story collection, The Birthday Books. Joanna loves sharing the joy of words and has participated in events as far afield as Iceland and Alaska. Joanna lives with gratitude on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. In 2021, she was awarded the Commissioner of Yukon’s Borealis Prize for literary contribution.

• More details about Jennifer Rahn

  Jennifer Rahn

  Jennifer Rahn is a Senior Research Associate currently working in cancer research. Her publications include three SF and two fantasy novels, eleven short stories, and a handful of scientific papers. Her favourite authors are Tanith Lee, Joan D. Vinge, and Dean Koontz. She lives in Calgary with her husband and daughter.

• More details about Y.R. Liu

  Y.R. Liu

  Y. R. Liu is a writer of dark fantasy and speculative fiction who spent more of her childhood in imaginary worlds than in the real one. A devourer of books, she has a particular fondness for bittersweet sacrifices, pyrrhic victories, and otherwise less-than-happy endings. Her fascination with the tragic and the fantastic extends to her own writing as she weaves tales of both woe and hope. When not writing, she enjoys good food, shiny trinkets, and Wikipedia rabbit holes. Currently, she resides in Montreal with her family.

• More details about HOSTED BY: Steve Hugh Westenra

  HOSTED BY: Steve Hugh Westenra

  Steve is a trans author of fantasy, science fiction, and horror (basically, if it’s weird he writes it). He's also a book reviewer, a SFINCS and SPFBO judge, and runs the Trans Reading Group discord. He grew up on the eldritch shores of Newfoundland, Canada, and currently lives and works in (the slightly less eldritch) Montreal. He holds advanced degrees in Russian Literature, Medieval Studies, and Religious Studies. His current academic work focuses on marginalized reclamations of monstrous figures. He has taught the History of Satan; Religion and its Monsters; and Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. Steve is passionate about queerness, Late Antiquity, and spiders.