Carl Wilson's recent book about Celine Dion and mass culture, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (Continuum Books, 33 1/3 Series), has been praised by the London Telegraph, Bookforum, New York Magazine, The New Yorker's Alex Ross, The Washington Post and The Onion, among many others. His work appears regularly in The Globe and Mail and on his own site Zoilus.com, among many other publications, including The New York Times, Slate and Blender. He contributed to the State of the Arts edition of Coach House Books' uTOpia series. Carl also helps run Trampoline Hall, the monthly non-expert lecture series at Sneaky Dee's, and recently co-curated two concerts of music in tribute to Toronto's concrete architecture with the Music Gallery.

Stunt (Coach House Books) is Claudia Dey's first novel. Her plays include: Beaver, The Gwendolyn Poems and Trout Stanley. She writes the "Group Therapy" column for the Globe and Mail. During its brief but illustrious life, Claudia wrote the sex column for Toro magazine under the pseudonym, Bebe O'Shea.

Dani Couture is a poet and fiction writer. Her first book of poetry, Good Meat, was published by Pedlar Press (2006); she has a second collection of poetry forthcoming from Pedlar, "The Handbook," and she is working on a novel, "Black Bear on Water."

Dani's first chapbook, midnight grocery, was mentioned in NOW Magazine's Best of Toronto 2005 edition. Her work has been published in a number of anthologies, journals, magazines and newspapers across Canada, including This Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Taddle Creek, Arc and The Fiddlehead. She is co-editor of Northern Poetry Review and the creator and photographer behind Animal Effigy.

Photo taken by Julie Wilson

David W. McFadden grew up in Steeltown and worked for the Hamilton Spectator for fourteen years. He moved to Toronto in 1982. He has published nine travel books and thirty books of verse, including the recent Why Are You So Sad?: Selected Poems, edited by Stuart Ross, published by Insomniac Press, and shortlisted by the Griffin Awards. His new book, Be Calm Honey: 154 Sonnets, is scheduled for the fall of 2008.

Photo taken by Lorianna De Giorgio, Town Crier

Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created En francais comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize (1998), Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Genie des autres (2002), La famille se crée en copulant (2005) and Hospitality (2008). He has also collaborated with Nadia Ross and her company STO Union. Together they have co-written and co-directed Recent Experiences (2000) and Revolutions in Therapy (2004). In 2007 he was invited to Berlin by Sophiensaele to adapt and direct Wolfgang Koeppen's 1954 novel Der Tod in Rom and in 2008 he was commissioned by Campo in Ghent to co-create a new performance entitled An Anthology of Optimism. His recent books include Unrehearsed Beauty (Coach House Books), Families Are Formed Through Copulation (Pedlar Press), Le génie des autres (Le Quartanier) and the upcoming novel Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. He frequently writes about contemporary art for C Magazine.

photo: Sylvain Baumann

Jason de Couto is an emerging artist primarily focusing on Jazz piano and turntablism. He has collaborated with local writers and artists, Hiromi Goto, Fred Wah, David Khang, and most frequently, Wayde Compton. He graduated from UBC in 2004 with a double major in Music and English; graduated from the Simon Fraser University Education Program (PDP) in 2007, focusing on Music and Language Arts pedagogy; and has completed 4th year Jazz Piano Performance courses at Capilano College. He has also recently been hired by both the Vancouver and Richmond School Boards as a band teacher and teacher-on-call.

Mariko Tamaki is a Toronto writer and performer with an avid interest in freaks, weirdos, and other fabulous forms of human behaviour. Mariko has published collections of creative non-fiction: True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice (2002), and Fake ID (2005), and one novella, Cover Me (2000). Most recently Mariko has co-created two graphic novels: Skim, illustrated by her cousin Jillian Tamaki, released by Groundwood Books in 2008 and Emiko Superstar, illustrated by Vancouver's Steve Rolston, which will be released as part of DC Comic's MINX series in Autumn 2008. In her spare time, Mariko is a columnist for Kiss Machine and Herizons, and teaches creative writing to adult and high school students.

Misha Glouberman is a performer, host, and facilitator, best known as the host of the Trampoline Hall Lectures. He also teaches courses in improvised music for regular people. This summer, he will be teaching a course in vocal improvisation and John Zorn¹s game-composition Cobra, that he thinks you¹d really enjoy: schooloflearning.org/cobra_08/

Motion is one of Canada’s most prolific urban artists – a millennial emcee -- manipulating words to their exponential power. Motion’s revolutions around words have generated for audiences a melodic flow that runs deep in its proverbial roots. She has two upcoming collections, 40 Dayz and Wordz, which launch this Fall on Women’s Press and Jackfruit Press.

Possessing charismatic agility in rap, songwriting and poetry, this award-winning artist has over the years developed into a keen composer and intense performer at the mic. She’s been featured in a range of compilations, including collaborations with the Butta Babees’ The Entrée EP and accompanying music video (Universal), Phem Phat’s Honey Drops (Universal), Rap Essentials (Beat Factory), The Best of Bounce (Jig Saw), the international B-Gyrl.com collection, Urban Noize and recently on the soundtrack for the film, When Moses Woke (Itoti Productions) which premiered on Bravo! Television. In 2004, Motion graced the stage at the Canadian Urban Music Awards with a stellar performance, aired nationally on CBC Television. Her career highlights include opening for artists Mos Def, Wyclef Jean, Nikki Giovanni, Jill Scott, The Last Poets, The Roots, and Talib Kweli. She’s shone in appearances sharing the stage with Canadian-bred stars The Rascalz, Tara Chase, Jully Black, k-os and Kardinal Offishal.

Ray Robertson is the author of the novels Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, Gently Down the Stream, and What Happened Later, as well as a collection of non-fiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing. What Happened Later was recently short listed for the 2008 Trillium Book Award. He is a Contributing Reviewer to the Globe and Mail and appears frequently on CBC Radio’s Talking Books.

A key figure in the city's vibrant performance scene in the 1970s, Giii has gone on to develop a practice notable for the depth of its engagement with artmaking and its associated philosophical issues. A student at OCA (now OCAD) in the early 1970s, Giii went on to develop a performance career, often in association with CEAC, one of the city’s original artist run centers. During that time Giii toured extensively with CEAC, performing in numerous cities in the US and Europe. In 1982, he founded TRY Organization Theatre Co. for ex-psychiatric patients, after his own experience with bi-polar disorder. At this time, Giii’s own art practice also changed and he began making the oil stick paintings and delicate drawings for which he is primarily known today. Giii has work in the permanent collections of the Museo de Ferrara, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Canada, and Art Gallery of Ontario, among others. He is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.

For further information please visit his website.

Photo taken by Helen Mayers

Sina Queyras grew up in her mother's Chrysler, traveling the roads of western Canada. She has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, New Jersey, Brooklyn and Philadelphia and Calgary where she was recently Writer-in-Residence. Her third collection of poetry, Lemon Hound (Coach House Books) received the Pat Lowther Award and a Lambda Literary Award. In 2005 she edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, for Persea Books (New York). She has taught creative writing at Haverford College and Rutgers University.

Sonnet L'Abbé is the author of two collections of poetry, A Strange Relief and Killarnoe, both published by McClelland and Stewart. She has taught writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, and is currently doing doctoral work in ecopoetics in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia.

The photo was taken by arabidopsis botanist Jin-Gui Chen

Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer whose books include 49th Parallel Psalm, Performance Bond and Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound poetry as a duo called The Contact Zone Crew. Compton is also a co-founding member of the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to preserving the public memory of Vancouver's original black community. He is also one of the publishers of Commodore Books. Wayde Compton teaches in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program, where he is a creative writing instructor in The Writer's Studio; he also teaches English composition and literature at Coquitlam College. He is the Writer-in-Residence at SFU for 2007-08.