Kerry Cranston-Reimer is the owner of Bryan Prince Bookseller in Hamilton, Ontario.

Richard Douglass-Chin is an associate professor of Postcolonial Literature in English, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor.  A mixed-race transman of West African, Chinese, South Asian, and Scottish descent, he is also a co-founder of RAACES (Racialized Academics and Advocates Centering Equity and Solidarity) at the university.  He has been a featured speaker at Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, where he has presented his ongoing research on the life of Belinda Sutton, and her 1783 petition to the Massachusetts Legislature for monies her enslaver owed her.  Richard is a presently a researcher and curator for Hamilton Civic Museum’s Griffin House in Ancaster, where he is investigating the history and migration of Enerals Griffin, a Black man escaping American slavery in the 1820s.  His short story “Blood Guitar” in The African American Review — exploring modernism’s deep debt to West African art, and his articles on Black Canadian poet NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! examine the often-erased histories, and intellectual contributions of Black peoples in the Western world.

Beth is a non-status, urban, Mi’kmaq woman who currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario. She graduated with a Master of Social Work in the Aboriginal Field of Study from Wilfrid Laurier University’s School of Social Work. Beth currently serves as a Counsellor with the Indigenous Education and Student Services team at Mohawk College. She spends much of her free time camping and enjoying being on the land.

Lawrence Hill is the author of ten books, including The Illegal, The Book of Negroes, and Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He is the winner of various awards, including The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Hill delivered the 2013 Massey Lectures, based on his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life. He co-wrote the adaptation for the six-part television miniseries The Book of Negroes, which won eleven Canadian Screen Awards. Hill served as chair of the jury of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a volunteer with Walls to Bridges and the Black Loyalist Heritage Society and is an honorary patron of Crossroads International. Hill is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph. In 2019, he developed and taught a memoir-writing workshop inside the Grand Valley Institution for Women (a federal penitentiary in Kitchener, ON). His new children’s novel, Beatrice and Croc Harry, is in the hands of his publisher. In addition, he is writing a new novel about the African-American soldiers who helped build the Alaska Highway in northern BC and Yukon in 1942-43. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and lives in Hamilton.

Rick Hill (Tuscarora) is an artist, writer and curator who lives at the Six Nations Community of the Grand River Territory in Ontario, Canada. Over the years, Rick has served as the Manager of the Indian Art Centre, Ottawa, Ontario; Director of the Museum at the Institute of American Arts in Santa Fe, NM; and the Assistant Director for Public Programs at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution; and Manager of the Haudenosaunee Resource Center. Currently he is the Senior Coordinator of Deyohaha:ge – Indigenous Knowledge Centre, Six Nations Polytechnic, Ohsweken, ON.

Dr. Elizabeth Jackson is Director of the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute at the University of Guelph. She builds on her research and teaching expertise in community engaged scholarship, practice-based research, and interdisciplinary approaches to social justice to facilitate mutually beneficial community-university partnerships and foster meaningful engagement between faculty, students and community.

Poet, archivist, and librarian, Paul Lisson was born into a family of union card carrying steelworkers who played in bagpipe bands. Paul has twice been the recipient of the City of Hamilton Arts Award—for visual art and literature in 1997 and for arts administration in 2017. He received the Rand Memorial Prize for accomplishment in print, established by the graduating class of 1898, McMaster University, and the International Merit Award for poetry from the Atlanta Review. He is the Founding Publisher/Editor of Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine. The Ontario Arts Council says that HA&L has the ‘distinction’ of being the first online magazine they have funded.

Grace Pollock has a Ph.D. in English and Cultural Studies and a Master of Social Work degree in community planning, organizations, and policy development. Currently serving as the Research Support Facilitator in Humanities at McMaster, she makes connections between people in and beyond the university and helps identify research, resource, and communication opportunities. Grace worked previously as a researcher-writer, project manager, and professional consultant focused principally on community development and knowledge exchange initiatives. As an advocate for engaged and inclusive communities, Grace’s current interests extend from new models of interdisciplinary research and university-community collaboration to building individual and institutional capacity for broad participation in public life.