Voted #1 “Rising-Star Guitarist” in 2013’s DownBeat Critics Poll and successively in the "Top-Ten Guitarists" in 2015, 2016 & 2017 alongside Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, guitarist and composer Rez Abbasi has become one of the most significant voices on the current jazz scene.

is a Nisga’a writer from British Columbia and the winner of the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for his poetry collection Injun. His creative work has recently been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry, The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation, and The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century. Abel is the author of Injun, Un/inhabited, and The Place of Scraps.

David R. Adler has written about jazz and assorted topics for JazzTimes, The Village Voice, Stereophile, The New York City Jazz Record, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, Time Out New York and many other publications.

Dr. Al-Solaylee is the author of the national bestselling memoir Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes. His latest book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), was hailed as "brilliant" by The Walrus magazine and "essential reading" by the Globe and Mail.

Durrah Alsaif is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited at galleries such as the Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver, and the Surrey Art Gallery. Alsaif believes that addressing and critiquing certain topics, especially through art, is a step toward making change.

Simranpreet Anand is an interdisciplinary artist and is committed to a community engaged practice. She is currently working as an Engagement Facilitator at the Surrey Art Gallery and Curatorial Assistant at Western Front.

Manhur Anand is poetry editor of Canadian Notes & Queries. She co-edited Regreen: New  Canadian Ecological Poetry, and her debut book of poems, A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award in 2015.

Rae Armantrout is a recently retired professor of poetry and poetics at UC San Diego. Her recent books include Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, and Wobble, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award.

Dr. Kamal Arora is an anthropologist whose work focuses on gender and Sikhism. She is currently serving as Co-Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Tara Atluri has a PhD in Sociology. She has written two books. The most recent, Uncommitted Crimes: The Defiance of the Artistic Imagi/nation discusses subaltern artists in and from Turtle Island (Canada) whose inspiring artwork serves as political critique.

Himani Bannerji is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, York University. Her research and writing life extend between Canada and India. Her interests encompass anti-racist feminism, Marxism, critical cultural theories and historical sociology. She has done extensive research and writing on patriarchy and class formation in colonial India as well as in different strands of nationalism, cultural identity and politics in India.

Arpita Bajpeyi is a kathak dancer and a public historian (Carleton University). She co-directs Staging Our Histories, and her writing has been published in Art India Magazine, Intermission, and Canthius.

Kiran Bhumber is a media artist, composer, musician and educator based in Vancouver, Canada. Kiran constructs interactive installations and performance systems that allow performers and audiences to engage with themes relating to cultural memory, embodiment and nostalgia.

Sadhu Binning is a bilingual author a central figure in the Punjabi arts community. He has published more than fifteen books of poetry, fiction, plays, translations and research.

Noa Bronstein is a curator and writer based in Toronto. Her curatorial projects include When Form Becomes Attitude (Calgary) bust/boom (Calgary), With an instinct for justice (Toronto) and Aleesa Cohene's solo exhibition I Don't Get It (Toronto, St. John's, and Vancouver).

Cathy Busby is a Canadian artist and activist based in Vancouver. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Visual Art at UBC.

Fathima Cader practices human rights law in Toronto and teaches at the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor. She is interested in borders and in the migrations of war.

Charles Campbell is a Jamaican-born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator.  He currently lives and works in Victoria BC.

Gurinder Chadha is one of the United Kingdom's most proven and respected Film Director and Producers.

Sammy Chien (Artistic Director of Chimerik 似不像) is a first generation Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant and queer artist-of-colour. He is an interdisciplinary artist, director, performer, researcher and mentor who works with film, sound art, new media, performance, movement and spiritual practice.

Tom Cho has been freelancing as an editor and writer since 1993. He is also a fiction writer whose collection of fictions, Look Who's Morphing, was published in his birth country of Australia and later released by Arsenal Pulp Press for North America.

Rohit Chokhani is an award-winning arts curator, director and cultural leader. He is the Artistic Director for Diwali in B.C., co-creator of the Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts, and is an Artistic Associate at Bard on the Beach. Rohit is highly passionate about making performing arts equitable.

Samaqani Cocahq (Natalie Sappier) grew up in Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick. She began as a visual artist, inspired by ceremonial teachings, language and surroundings.

Scheherazaad Cooper is an accomplished Canadian performer and choreographer, drawing from nearly thirty years as an Odissi classical Indian dancer, as well as a background in theatre, in her contemporary work.

Chris Creighton-Kelly is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and cultural critic born in the UK with South Asian/British roots. His artworks have been presented across Canada and in India, Europe & the USA.

Mehjabeen Datoo is a Secondary Humanities teacher and teacher educator working in the Richmond School District in British Columbia.

Junie Désil is a Haitian-Canadian poet who has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine and was recently shortlisted for Prism International’s Pacific Poetry Prize.

Deena is a PhD Candidate in the English Department at the University of British Columbia. His work concerns the intersections of the nation, post-colonial capitalism and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

Phinder Dulai is a writer and poet living in Surrey, B.C. His poetry is published in Canadian Literature, Offerings, Cue Books Anthology, and other publications. He is a co-founder of The South Of Fraser Inter Arts Collective, and is the author of two poetry books.

Mercedes Eng teaches and writes in Vancouver, on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. She is the author of Mercenary English, a long poem about violence and resistance in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver.

Soheila K. Esfahani is a visual artist, lecturer at the University of Waterloo, and an educator at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Her research and art practice navigates the terrains of cultural translation in order to explore the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation.

Dr. Sal Ferreras is a percussionist, administrator, and an artist dedicated to the pursuit of connections and the bringing together of diverse minds towards common goals.

Kathleen Flaherty is the Dramaturg at PTC, and a former producer of radio drama and Ideas documentaries for CBC Radio. She collaborates with theatre makers to manifest a piece of theatre live in space with the capacity to engage an audience.

David Garneau (Métis) is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing.

Veena Gokhale is a freelance writer living in Montreal. She started her career as a journalist in Bombay, which inspired Bombay Wali and other stories, published by Guernica Editions in 2013. Her novel, Land for Fatimah (Guernica Editions, 2018), is partly inspired by the two years she spent working in Tanzania.

Babak Golkar was born in Berkeley in 1977. He spent most of his formative years in Tehran until 1996 when he migrated to Vancouver, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2003 and a Masters of Fine Arts from the UBC in 2006.

Beau Gomez is a photo-based artist living in Toronto, Canada. His projects are mainly driven by a curiosity in understanding and subsequently re-envisioning social and cultural tropes of manhood, homosociality and principles of intimacy.

Ayumi Goto is a performance apprentice, currently based in Toronto. Born in Canada, she sometimes draws upon her Japanese heritage and language to investigate notions of national culturalism, senses of belonging, and activism in her creative practice.

Garry Gottfriedson has 10 published books, and has read from his work across Canada, United States, Europe, and Asia. His work has been anthologized and published nationally and internationally.

Nicolás Grandi is a Buenos Aires based filmmaker, transdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator. He has been teaching film theory and practice in universities, schools and community workshops in Argentina and India where he lived for 5 years. His films include La Pasión Según Ander (2005), Casafuerte (2004), and Simon Decouvre (2000).

Pilar Guinea is a Guatemalan artist living in Vancouver. In her work Guinea tries to understand and explain the concept of displacement throughout investigations of our modern world, questions about identity and feminism.

Merging cultural activism and photography, Sunil Gupta creates compositions that exist within the frames of politics and theatre to explore themes of identity and homosexuality. His works deal with issues surrounding homosexuality, particularly the personal and social implications of being homosexual in both Eastern and Western societies.

Melanie Hardbattle is an Archivist with Simon Fraser University Library, Special Collections. She has been instrumental in the Rungh archive being digitized in the Simon Fraser University Digitized Collections.

Osheen Harruthoonyan is an Armenian-Canadian photographer who merges movement with themes of cultural heritage and renewal.

Roald Hoffman is a writer of poetry, essays, non-fiction, and plays. An accomplished chemist, he has carved out his own territory between poetry, philosophy, and science.

Tarah Hogue is the inaugural Senior Curatorial Fellow, Indigenous Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery and is a Visiting Curator at the Institute of Modern Art in Mianjin Brisbane for 2018.

Zakir Hussain is one of the world’s foremost percussionists in Jazz and World Music. An unparalleled virtuoso of the tabla.

Doaa Jamal is a freelance graphic designer and photographer. Her professional expertise lies in creating dynamic visuals for individuals and organizations eager to understand their identity through the power of colour, shape, and symbolism.

Am Johal is Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. He is the author of 'Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene' and co-author of "Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale."

Hanif Karim lives in Vancouver and once, many years ago, played soccer with Rawi Hage on a gorgeous summer day in Montreal.

Kiran Kaur is a writer who was born on the traditional territories of the Sinixt peoples, and the Ktunaxa peoples. They are currently at work on a queer Punjabi love saga entitled, Nerve, as well as a collection of Punjabi ghost stories. They live with their parents.

Professor Ali Kazimi is a filmmaker, writer, and visual artist whose work deals with race, social justice, migration, history, memory and archive.

Hussein Keshani is an Art Historian who researches and teaches South Asian visual cultures at the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna, B.C., Canada.

Ausma Zehanat Khan is a community activist and writer living in Colorado. She is the author of The Unquiet Dead and The Bloodprint, her fantasy debut.

Erum Khan is a film and theatre maker. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of Toronto. She is currently the Youth Coordinator for the Rendezvous With Madness Festival.

Sara Khan was born in Birmingham, England in 1984 and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. She holds a BFA(with honours) from National College of Arts, Lahore (2008). Her works have been featured in several national and international group exhibitions.

Sukaina Kubba is an architect and artist. She works with a variety of materials within the canon of painting including latex, PVC, Polyester, silk and found objects.

Rahat Kurd is a poet and cultural critic living in Vancouver.

Mackenzie Lad is a photographer, writer, and journalism student at Concordia University in Montreal. Her photography and writing has appeared in various publications online and in print.

Chris Lee is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on diaspora Chinese literary thought during the Cold War and the cultural politics of Chinese Canadian historical narratives.

Nancy Lee is an interdisciplinary media artist, filmmaker and electronic music curator. Her work stimulates and enlivens space, making a provocative statement about how inescapably interconnected we are with our surroundings.

Zab Maboungou is an artist, a philosopher, and a leader in the field of both dance creation and dance teaching.

Hailed by Pitchfork as "jaw-dropping, one of the finest saxophonists going," alto saxophonist, composer and educator Rudresh Mahanthappa is widely known as one of the premier voices in jazz of the 21st century.

Lata Mani, Ph.D. is a feminist historian, cultural critic, contemplative writer and filmmaker. She has published on a broad range of issues, from feminism and colonialism, to illness, spiritual philosophy and contemporary politics. She is the director of the film, Leela’s Journey (2009).

P. Mansaram was born in 1934 in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, India and studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art. Shortly after studying at the Rijks Academie in Amsterdam, he migrated to Canada in 1966. In 2016, the ROM acquired over 700 pieces from the artist’s archive reflecting over 50 years of his work.

Derek Mascarenhas's fiction has been published in Joyland, The Dalhousie Review, Switchback, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Cosmonauts Avenue, and The Antigonish Review.

Seema Mehta is a dancer, choreographer, and fine artist. Seema's style establishes an admirable balance between the subtle and graceful yet powerful, especially in her footwork. Beyond the traditional perception of dance, Seema’s vision is to touch lives through her art.

Farrah Miranda is an Abu Dhabi born, Toronto-based artist of Goan and Mangalorean descent. She has exhibited at the Santa Fe Arts Institute, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, Onsite Gallery, Art Gallery of York University, Artcite Inc., Surrey Art Gallery, Astérides, and Whippersnapper Gallery.

Shani Mootoo writes fiction and poetry, and is a visual artist and video maker. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Arts Award, 2017 Chalmers Fellowship Award, and the James Duggins Outstanding Midcareer Novelist Award. Her forthcoming novel Polar Vortex will be published early 2020 by Book*Hug Press.

Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist, curator, and writer. In his artistic practice and curatorial work, Morin's practice-based research investigates the impact zones that occur when indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism collide.

Tijiki Morris is a creator, puppetry artist, performer and director who was raised in Pakistan and came to Canada after secondary school. Tijiki is currently a playwright-in-residence at Theatre Passe Muraille.

Dr. Anne Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, and co-Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research in the Institute of Asian Research.

Carolyn Nakagawa is a poet, playwright, and cultural organizer. She holds a degree in English Literature and Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies from UBC.

Shenaaz Nanji is an internationally published children’s author.

Zinnia Naqvi is a visual artist based in Toronto and Montreal.

Cecily Nicholson is the administrator for Gallery Gachet, an artist-run centre and mental health resource in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. She is the author of Triage and From the Poplars.

Jivesh Parasram is an award winning multi-disciplinary artist, and a fine maker of dhal. His work has been performed internationally including Canada, Italy, and the West Indies. He is Artistic Director at Rumble Theatre in Vancouver, and is a co-founder of Pandemic Theatre.

Shagufta Pasta is a Vancouver-based literary advocate, social planner and writer. As a storyteller, her purpose is to amplify stories written by people of colour, for people of colour and to help people find books that meet them where they are.

Dawit L. Petros is a Visiting Artist in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK. He investigates boundaries in artistic, geographical and cultural contexts.

Zahida Rahemtulla is an emerging writer of fiction and theatre. Her play-in-progress, The Wrong Bashir, was recently selected as a national finalist for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre's MSG program and is in development at the Playwrights Theatre Centre.

Jagdeep Singh Raina is an artist who has studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine.

Ian Iqbal Rashid is a London-based poet, screenwriter and filmmaker. His films have screened at festivals from Sundance to Toronto and been distributed theatrically. He is currently writing a drama series exploring the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in Canada for the CBC, and bastardising Jane Austen for a comedy series in the UK at ITV. He is the author of three award-winning volumes of poetry.

Salman Rushdie is the author of thirteen novels, a book of stories, and four works of non-fiction. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, and his books have been translated into over forty languages.

Julian Samuel is a documentary filmmaker, writer and painter.

Hassan Ghedi Santur emigrated from Somalia to Canada at age thirteen. He has worked as a radio journalist for CBC radio and his print journalism work has appeared in the New York Times, Yahoo News, and The Walrus, among others.

Sandra Semchuk is a photographer and storyteller who uses the familial, autobiography and dialogue as the basis for recognition and identity across generations, cultures and species.

Rajarshi Sengupta is a practitioner and a PhD candidate in art history at the Dept. of Art History, Visual Arts, and Theory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His work focuses on artisanal histories and practice-theory interface.

(Nep) Nirbhai Singh Sidhu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Sidhu's art practice highlights conceptual and technical components originating from antiquity, with relevance for the present.

Madiha Sikander graduated from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, specializing in miniature painting. She works around issues of historical erasure and memory.

Jason Samuel Smith is a dancer, choreographer and performer He is a dedicated champion of the Art form of Tap Dance. Jason promotes respect for the art form and creates opportunities for upcoming generations as he continues to travel as an ambassador for tap around the world.

Kiran Sunar is a Liu Scholar and a PhD student in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Kiran's PhD project attends to questions of gender, sexuality, and the fantastical in South Asian literatures with a focus on Punjabi literature in the early modern period.

Sroop Sunar is a London based illustrator. She's worked with clients such as Penguin, Random House and The New York Times, and has exhibited in London and Berlin.

Sanchari Sur is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow. Her work can be found in Daily Xtra, Room, Toronto Book Award shortlisted The Unpublished City (Book*hug, 2017), Arc Poetry Magazine, Humber Literary Review, Prism International, and elsewhere.

Swapnaa Tamhane is an artist and curator. She has been closely studying the Indian performance artist Rummana Hussain (1952- 1999).

Manjushree Thapa was born in Kathmandu and raised in Nepal, Canada, and the United States. She has written several books of fiction and non-fiction.

Sarah Tolmie is the author of the speculative fictions Two Travelers, NoFood, The Stone Boatman, and The Little Animals.

Toleen Touq is a curator, cultural producer and writer based in Toronto. Her approach takes site-responsiveness as a methodology to build radical pedagogical platforms and alternative knowledge systems.

France Trépanier is a visual artist, curator and researcher of Kanien’kéha:ka and French ancestry. Her practice is informed by strategies of collaboration.

Jaret Vadera is a transdisciplinary artist whose work explores how different social, technological, and cognitive processes shape and control the ways that we understand the world around and within us.

Rahul Varma is a playwright, essayist, and community activist. He is a co-founder and artistic director of Teesri Duniya Theatre. His works include Land Where The Trees Talk, No Man's Land, Trading Injuries, Counter Offence, and Bhopal. Rahul lives in Montreal with his wife and his daughter.

Indu Vashist is a writer, and the Executive Director of SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre).

Conner Singh VanderBeek is a composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. His research focuses on artistic and musical expressions of the Punjabi diaspora with special attention to how diasporic Punjabis, through stylistic blending, perform difference from and compatibility with mainstream multicultural Canada.

Eduardo Velázquez is Dominican American artist and filmmaker working in video, painting, performance and multimedia installations.

Hal Wake has been engaged with the literary community in Canada for more than 30 years. He has interviewed many well-known authors, and has hosted or moderated hundreds of literary events. He is an Honorary Member of the Writers Union of Canada, and is the former Artistic Director of the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Mandeep Wirk is a writer and journalist, Wirk is also a visual artist, photographer, educator, and social activist.

Rita Wong is a poet-scholar who has written several books of poetry. She lives, works and strives for water justice on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh First Nations.

Hyung-Min Yoon is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada and Seoul, Korea. Yoon’s work explores the broad notion of translation and the history of language through re-contextualization.

Abeer Yusuf is a journalist, media professional, writer, avid book-reader and interested in all things coloured yellow.