Jason Allen has lived in Hamilton with his family for twenty years, where he has spent much of that time scouring the city for things to do and ways to keep his kids occupied. Jason has lived in Calgary, Guelph, Toronto, Buffalo, Los Angeles and Reno, and would trade any of them for Hamilton. Jason works as an outdoor educator and adult learning course designer and writes for local publications about the city and the environment. He lives in the west end with his wife, two adult sons and two cats.

SATURDAY
11AM Festival Field Trip: Walking Tour

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist, the author of 31 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was longlisted for Canada Reads. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

FRIDAY
7PM Get Lit! A Live Podcast Recording

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Elise Bird (née Arsenault) is an award-winning local writer and musician. Her work has been published by the New Quarterly, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and Guernica Editions. Elise holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King's College, works for the Hamilton Public Library, and co-leads the Shaky Knees Club, a songwriting collective for Hamilton artists.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Anne Bokma is Hamilton-based journalist and author. Her memoir, My Year of Living Spiritually: One Woman's Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life, was published by Douglas & McIntyre and won the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Kerry Schooley Book Award. She is a recipient of the City of Hamilton's Arts Award for Established Writers and was nominated in 2025 for The Landsberg Award, named after trailblazing feminist journalist Michele Landsberg. Anne is also a memoir writing coach and workshop and retreat leader as well as a columnist at The Hamilton Spectator. She is the founder and host of the 6-Minute Memoir storytelling event.  

SATURDAY
12:30 PM Small Sparks, Big Truths: The Power of Short-Burst Writing with Anne Bokma

Deborah Bowen is a retired English professor from Redeemer University. Her love of the land dates back to her childhood in the southern English countryside.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism, and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’ Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.

SUNDAY
2PM In Crisis, On Crisis: Storytelling in Urgent Times

Ann Y. K. Choi, originally from Chung-Ju, South Korea, is a Toronto-based author and educator. Her novel Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. In 2017, Choi was honoured by the Korean Canadian Heritage Awards committee and awarded with the Culture Award for promoting Korean heritage within Canada. Choi currently serves on the program advisory committee for gritLIT, Hamilton’s literary festival, mentors emerging writers in a group she founded called Writers in Trees, and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies. Her second novel, All Things Under the Moon, published in fall 2025.

SATURDAY
8:30PM Against the World

SUNDAY
10AM gritLIT Book Club with Annette Hamm
12:30PM The Long Journey: Cultivating a Writer’s Mindset

Quill Christie-Peters is an Anishinaabe educator and self-taught visual artist from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation located in Treaty 3 territory. She is the creator and director of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a master’s degree in Indigenous governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love. She has spoken at Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and California College of the Arts, and her written work can be found in GUTS magazine and Canadian Art. She is also a mother, beadwork artist, and traditional tattoo practitioner following the protocols of her community. All of her work can be found at @raunchykwe.

SATURDAY
2PM Embodied Liberation: Bodies, Wholeness, and Empowerment

Kerry Clare is the author of the novels Asking for a Friend, Waiting for a Star to Fall, and Mitzi Bytes; and editor of The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood. Her essays have been nominated for National Magazine Awards. She edits 49thShelf.com, a website about Canadian books, and writes about books and reading on her longtime blog, Pickle Me This. Kerry Clare lives in Toronto with her family.

SATURDAY
3:30PM Definitely Thriving: Loss, Love, and Beginning Again
8:30PM Against the World

Linzey Corridon is a poet, a nonfiction writer, and a researcher whose work spans the fields of Caribbean studies, Black feminist studies, queer theory, and the digital humanities. A former Vanier Canada Scholar, he received his PhD from the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. He teaches literature, creative writing, and critical theory, in addition to his current role as a postdoctoral fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University where he is completing a book of essays entitled The Problem is That We’re Alive. His book debut titled West of West Indian, winner of the the 2025 Hamilton Literary Award, was a finalist for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2025 Caricon Prize for Literature, as well as being acclaimed one of the best Canadian poetry collections of 2024 by the CBC. Born and raised in the Caribbean multi-island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, he currently resides in Hamilton, Ontario.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

SUNDAY
2PM In Crisis, On Crisis: Storytelling in Urgent Times

Alicia Cox Thomson has been working in Toronto media for over 20 years as a lifestyle editor and writer for some of Canada's biggest brands. Today, she writes about culture, design, books and more for the Globe and Mail, 3 Magazine, Chatelaine and the CBC. She also champions her favourite books on-air as a columnist for CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter.

SATURDAY
12:30PM What is Community?
3:30PM Definitely Thriving: Loss, Love, and Beginning Again

Trynne Delaney (they/them) is a writer currently based in Tkaronto (Toronto). They are the author of the half-drowned (winner of the QWF First Book Prize) and A House Unsettled.

SUNDAY
3:30PM Short Stories

Jaclyn Desforges is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther Books), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC's picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She's also the author of Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020), a picture book which was shortlisted for a Chocolate Lily Award and selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club. In 2023, Jaclyn served as the youngest-ever Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. Her writing has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, the Best of the Net anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. Jaclyn was a finalist for the 2024 CRAFT Novelette Print Prize, the 2024 Room magazine Fiction contest, the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2023 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. She’s the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and two Short Works Prizes. Jaclyn’s writing has been featured in literary magazines across North America. She is an alumna of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing. Jaclyn teaches creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University and lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter.

FRIDAY
8:30PM Hamilton Writes

SUNDAY
12:30PM Writing Workshop: Writing Weird: Vulnerability as Superpower by Jaclyn Desforges
3:30PM Short Stories

Linda Frank was born in Montreal and has lived in Hamilton since 1977. Her poetry has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She has four books of poetry, Cobalt Moon Embrace; Kahlo:The World Split Open; Insomnie Blues and her latest, Divided (Wolsak & Wynn, 2018). Kahlo: The World Split Open was shortlisted for the 2009 Pat Lowther Award. She is a past winner of the Bliss Carman Award and has been short listed for the National Magazine Award. Divided won the $10,000 2019 Vine Poetry Award for Canadian Jewish Literature.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

A. Gregory Frankson has published his words in four poetry collections, six anthologies, and numerous newspapers and literary journals. Greg is a former national poetry slam champion and on-air poetic commentator on CBC Radio One in Toronto. Currently, he serves on the board of directors for Canada SCORES and is the artistic director of the Canadian Black Literary Festival and BlackLit Durham. Greg’s first book of creative nonfiction, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters, was released by Rare Machines (Dundurn Press) in January 2025.

WEDNESDAY
8:30 PM gritLIT Short Story Winners

Bar Fridman-Tell has a BA in art history and an MA in English literature. (She gleefully wrote her thesis about Victorian vampires.) She has worked as a bartender, a bookseller, a translator, and a library assistant. She is currently studying for a master’s in library and information sciences, hoping to stay in a library for good. She lives in Toronto with her professor husband and two very fluffy cats. Honeysuckle is her debut novel.

SATURDAY
8:30PM Against the World

Camilla Gibb is the internationally acclaimed author of five novels: Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, and The Relatives. She is also the author of the RBC Taylor Prize–shortlisted memoir This Is Happy. Gibb has received the Trillium Book Award and the City of Toronto Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

SATURDAY
10:30 AM Festival Field Trip: Everyone Can Collage with Camilla Gibb

Annette Hamm is a lifelong reader lucky enough to be able to read for a living. She enjoys prepping for author segments for Morning Live on CHCH (where she also delivers the day's news), interviewing writers for events (like this one!), and devouring a new library find.

SUNDAY
10AM gritLIT Book Club with Annette Hamm

Karenna’onwe (Gaw-law-naw-oo-way) – Dr. Karen Hill is an award-winning Mohawk physician from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Her passion to see traditional Indigenous knowledge return to the centre of life for Indigenous people along with the love for her mother has brought her to write this first book in a series of four. Within vignettes from her mother’s life growing up on the Rez, “The Good Mind” offers the embodiment of Creator’s Original Instructions to the people and the beauty of life that ensues.

SUNDAY
11AM The Good Mind: In Conversation with Karenna’onwe — Dr. Karen Hill

Chukky Ibe is an author, folklorist and poet. With roots deeply embedded in oral traditions and a voice attuned to the rhythms of modern life, Chukky brings stories to life with a lyrical blend of authenticity, emotion, and insight. He was born in Lagos, and has called Hamilton home for over ten years. His debut novel, The List of Noisemakers, published by Masobe Books.

FRIDAY
8:30PM Hamilton Writes

SATURDAY
2PM Writing Workshop: Shipwreck with Chukky Ibe

Tamara Jong is a Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) born writer of Chinese and European ancestry. Her work has been published in the Humber Literary Review, Room magazine, and the Fiddlehead, and has been both long and shortlisted for various creative nonfiction prizes. She is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, and a former member of Room magazine’s collective. She currently lives and works on Treaty 3 territory, the occupied and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Guelph, ON). Worldly Girls is her first book.

SATURDAY
12:30PM What is Community?
7PM Finding Your Own Path

Saad Omar Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea before immigrating to Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies (University of Toronto) where he was a finalist for the Random House Creative Writing Award (2010 and 2011) and for the Marina Nemat Award (2012). In 2019, he was longlisted for the Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories, 2025 and other publications.

SATURDAY
12:30PM What is Community?

SUNDAY
12:30PM The Long Journey: Cultivating a Writer’s Mindset

Robin Lacambra (they/she) is a queer Filipinx artist, speaker, and facilitator. Drawing from somatic relational psychotherapy, mindful movement, and conflict mediation, Robin’s work aims to demonstrate how interconnected we are, highlighting our shared responsibility to co-create a just and liberated world. Alongside their roles as the creator of GOODBODYFEEL Movement & Therapy, the director of the Safer Spaces Project, and a counsellor at SACHA (Sexual Assault Center of Hamilton Area), Robin works with individuals, groups, and organizations to foster self-awareness, resilience, and healthier relationships. They also navigate the challenges of living with chronic pain and persistently feeling "not enough.” Robin's personal journey empowers her to facilitate spaces where tender areas can transform into sources of strength. Their approach celebrates vulnerability and encourages others to challenge their beliefs and boundaries, fostering a deep sense of belonging that begins within and radiates outward. In addition to her professional endeavors, Robin is a mother and embraces their playful-shit-disturber persona. She also loves ube tiramisu.

SATURDAY
2PM Embodied Liberation: Bodies, Wholeness, and Empowerment

Lavanya Lakshmi has lived in nine cities across India, China, the US, and Canada. One of her many childhood homes was a suite on the 37th floor of a luxury hotel. She earned a Master's degree from NYU and lived in New York City for nine years before moving to Toronto, where she currently resides, despite being a very vocal hater of cold weather. She has worked in and around book publishing her whole career. Leave and Come Back is her first novel.

THURSDAY
6:30PM Opening Night, Opening Pages

Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. Her book of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best first collection, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award, and has been optioned for television. Her novel, The Wondrous Woo, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award. She holds a PhD in sociology and equity studies from OISE/University of Toronto and teaches at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.

SATURDAY
8:30PM Against the World

SUNDAY
11AM Writing Workshop: Setting with Carrianne Leung ‍

Chandra Maracle is Kanyen’keha:ka/Mohawk Nation and she lives at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She has four daughters and wears many hats. She is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She is researching Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) food history, eating psychology and postpartum food and care practices.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Paige Maylott is a Hamiltonian author, gamer, and accessibility specialist. Her memoir, My Body is Distant (ECW Press, 2023), examines gender transition, critical illness, and digital identity. This work earned the 2024 Hamilton Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the Gold IPPY Award for LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction, a spot on the Rakuten Kobo shortlist, and was one of Hamilton Review of Books’ Best Books of 2023. Praised by CBC Books, Publishers Weekly, Open Book, and the Whistler Writers Festival, among others. When not writing, Paige collects retro video games and blasts 80s hair metal—because sometimes the best plot twist is a guitar solo.

WEDNESDAY
8:30 PM gritLIT Short Story Winners

SATURDAY
3:30PM Writing Workshop: Queering the Page: Writing Voice, Desire, and Belonging Without Apology by Paige Maylott

Emma McKenna is a multidisciplinary writer with a passion for women's histories and narratives. She received her PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University and has published widely on feminist issues. McKenna is the author of Chenille or Silk, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry, and Gold Star. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, and raised in Alberta, she currently lives in the Waterloo Region with her husband and two dogs. 

SATURDAY
2PM Embodied Liberation: Bodies, Wholeness, and Empowerment

Writing Coach and Facilitator, Firefly Creative Writing

Mari Mendoza joined Firefly as a Writing Coach in 2020 and has since given countless writers permission to give their writing more tenderness. In the last couple of years, she’s written romance, historical fiction, YA dystopia, and hundreds of 100-word stories about her life. Mari’s also a big reader, follow her book journeys on Instagram: @the_bookish_musings_of_mari

WEDNESDAY
7PM Start Your Festival Here: A Gentle and Generative Creative Writing Session with Firefly Creative Writing

Mai Nguyen is a Vietnamese Canadian author whose debut novel, Sunshine Nails, was longlisted for Canada Reads and named one of the best books of 2023 by NPR and CBC. Her journalism has appeared in Wired, theWashington Post, and the Toronto Star. Raised in Halifax, she now lives in Toronto with her husband, daughter, and French bulldog. Her second novel, Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead, publishes in April 2025.

SATURDAY
3:30PM Definitely Thriving: Loss, Love, and Beginning Again

Vinh Nguyen is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Brick, Literary Hub, the Malahat Review, PRISM international, Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, The Criterion Collection’s Current, and MUBI’s Notebook. He is a nonfiction editor at the New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant, and diasporic writing. He is the author of the academic book Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience. His writing has been short-listed for a National Magazine Award and has received the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Nonfiction for emerging LGBTQ writers. 

SUNDAY
2PM In Crisis, On Crisis: Storytelling in Urgent Times
3:30PM Writing Workshop: The Speculative Memoir with Vinh Nguyen

Amil Niazi was born in London, U.K. to Pakistani parents before the family moved to Canada. She studied journalism in Vancouver, founded her own print magazine, and then moved to Toronto, where she worked at CBC and Vice. She moved back to the UK to work for the BBC and the Guardian, and then, when the pandemic hit, returned to Toronto to go freelance. She’s published essays in the New York Times, The Cut,the Guardian, Romper, the Washington Post, Hazlitt, Elle, Vice and Refinery29.

SATURDAY
7PM Finding Your Own Path

Emily Ohanjanians lives with her family in Toronto, Canada, where she works as a professional book editor. After many years on the other side of the desk, she decided to parlay a lifelong love of joyous, escapist, romantic stories into her own writing. The Book Tour is her first novel.

THURSDAY
6:30PM Opening Night, Opening Pages

Joe Ollmann lives in Hamilton, the Riviera of Southern Ontario. His third book with Drawn & Quarterly, Fictional Father, was the first graphic novel to be shortlisted in the category of Adult Fiction at the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

SUNDAY
3:30PM Short Stories

Erin Pepler is the author of Send Me Into The Woods Alone: Essays on Motherhood (Invisible Publishing, 2022). Listed as a 'Best Book of 2022' by 49th Shelf and one of the top ten nonfiction books of the past decade by The Festival of Literary Diversity, Send Me Into The Woods Alone was featured in Quill and Quire, Publisher's Weekly, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Herizons Magazine and other publications. Erin's writing has appeared in Today’s Parent, Chatelaine, Maclean's, Reader's Digest, MoneySense, Broadview Magazine and more. She lives in the GTHA with her family.

Sarah Mughal Rana is a Muslim author and student who completed her bachelor's with honours at the University of Toronto and is now at Oxford University, studying at the intersection of economics and policy. She is a BookTok personality and the co-host of the On the Write Track podcast, where she enjoys spilling tea with her favourite authors about the book world. Her debut YA novel, Hope Ablaze, was published in February 2024. Outside of school, she falls down history rabbit holes and trains in traditional martial arts.

THURSDAY
6:30PM Opening Night, Opening Pages

Each publishing season, the  Readers' Advisory Divas & Dudes, which includes Canadian library representatives from Ampersand, Penguin Random House, Canadian Manda, Scholastic, HarperCollins, Orca Books, and Martin & Associates, curates lists highlighting their selections of new releases. Their lists include buzzworthy titles, in-house favourites, notable debuts, Canadian authors, and books for all ages that encompass a wide array of diverse identities and experiences. See their book lists at: readersadvisorydivasanddudes.wordpress.com

FRIDAY
3PM Coffee Break with the Reader’s Advisory Divas and Dudes

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 passions 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 has been 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 pretension crisis in Indian Country; selected as a Finalist with the Indie Book Awards, has received numerous stage readings and has been published by Turtle’s Back Publishing in 2023.  She holds many radio producer credits and was part of the Downie Wenjack A Day to Listen national broadcast 2024, Words and Culture 6-episode Haudenosaunee Language Series Indigiverse SiriusXM 2024 and Guest-Hosted 10 episodes of the Kim Wheeler Show Indigiverse SiriusXM summer 2024.  

January successfully completed the Cultural Cadence Indigenous Music Industry Training Program April 20205 hosted by the Indigenous Music Office and will complete the Blue Print Artists Development 12 week training hosted by the Tune In Foundation June 2025.

SUNDAY
11AM The Good Mind: In Conversation with Karenna’onwe — Dr. Karen Hill

Arwen Roussell is a writer, model, and musician born and raised in Hamilton. Over her 20 years as an artist, she has performed at numerous festivals, received grants and mentorships for her work, and is always grateful for collaboration, self-expression, and creating in relationship with the land.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Bernadette Rule’s tenth book of poetry is The Window Washer of Chartres, a chapbook of linked poems (Paradise North Press, 2023). Rule has published two creative nonfiction novels, Dark Fire (2021) and The Arithmetic of Color (2023). She has two forthcoming poetry collections: A Trick of the Light & Other Poems (St Thomas Poetry Series); and Laura Looks Back (Paradise North Press). Her work has received various prizes, including the 2017 City of Hamilton Arts Award for Writing. www.bernadetterulebooks.ca

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Liselle Sambury is a Trinidadian Canadian author and Governor General’s Literary Awards Finalist. She has a love for stories with dark themes, complicated families, and edges of hope. In her free time, she shares helpful tips for upcoming writers and details of her publishing journey through a YouTube channel dedicated to demystifying the business of being an author.

FRIDAY
8:30PM Hamilton Writes

Writing Coach and Assistant Director, Firefly Creative Writing

Britt Smith, Writing Coach and Assistant Director at Firefly, believes in the importance of each story making its way into the world. She loves supporting writers through the ups and downs of long projects and one of her absolute favourite Firefly courses, “The Further Shore,” helps clients use creative writing to explore death and dying. Britt’s writing has been published in several magazines and journals at home and abroad and she’s currently writing a novel and a collection of short stories.

WEDNESDAY
7PM Start Your Festival Here: A Gentle and Generative Creative Writing Session with Firefly Creative Writing

Jennifer Tan is a member of and a regular contributor to Hamilton's Tower Poetry Society. The rhythm and energy she had in the 1980's as an aerobics instructor have been transmitted through the writing of poetry. Now in her seventies, she has to write quickly and briefly in free verse as there is not much time left for formality.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Jamie Tennant is a writer, author and broadcast(er) director based in Hamilton, ON. He has covered music pop culture both locally and nationally. His debut novel, The Captain of Kinnoull Hill, was released in 2016. Jamie also hosts the weekly books and literature program/podcast Get Lit. His latest novel, River, Diverted, was released in 2022.

FRIDAY
7PM Get Lit! A Live Podcast Recording
8:30PM Hamilton Writes

John Terpstra’s father sold Dutch landscape paintings from the trunk of his car in the first years of his immigration to Canada. His firstborn son on Canadian soil sells books of poetry and creative non-fiction from the shelves of independent bookstores all over the country, and from boxes stacked in his closet. They’ve won a few prizes. A lot of his writing is about the landscape here, at Head of the Lake.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place   

Elizabeth Tessier is a Hamilton poet. Her work is informed by her 30 years working in Hamilton museums and her current life with early onset Parkinson’s. She has previously published in Evenings on Paisley Avenue: Seven Hamilton Poets. She has a self-published book, The Words They Cannot Say, edited by her friend and mentor Marilyn Gear-Pilling. Her chapbook entitled Frozen Charlotte is published by Frog Hollow Press edited by Shane Neilson as part of their Dis/Ability series. She has had work in RAVE and the Spring 2021 H&L thanks to her friend, inspiration and editor Bernadette Rule.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer based in Hamilton, ON. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines and anthologies, and she is the Fiction Editor at the Ex-Puritan. Her short story collection, titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi, 2023) won the Writers Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, A Kiss of Crimson Ash (Penguin Random House, 2026), the first in a new romantasy trilogy inspired by medieval India, is forthcoming in spring 2026. Find Anuja on Instagram and TikTok (@anuja_v across platforms) or through her website anujavarghese.com.

SUNDAY
3:30PM Short Stories

Renessa Visser is a Hamilton-based artist who is deeply inspired by local ecology and urban ecosystems. She currently works as a Watershed Monitoring Technician for Conservation Halton and her writing has appeared in Hamilton Arts and Letters and the Blue Marble Review. She is delighted to be included in Poetry in Place.

SATURDAY
10:30AM Poetry in Place

Zenia Wadhwani is the author of the picture books Once Upon a Sari and 'Twas the Night Before Diwali. Zenia is an avid reader, an advocate for literacy and a promoter of emerging writers, but it took the pandemic and a looming milestone birthday to unleash her first children's story. By day, Zenia spends her time working on issues of equity and social justice; by night, she lets her creativity flow into her writing. Zenia lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family, and many of her stories are inspired by her daughter Avani.

SUNDAY
10:30AM Festival Field Trip at the Hamilton Farmer’s Market with Zenia Wadhwani