Writers Festival

Athena McKenzie is a writer and content strategist who uses storytelling to bring data, ideas, and human experience to life. She is Content Manager at Fresh Tracks Canada, working across web, email, paid media, and social. Athena has led editorial for publications including Spruce, YAM, and Douglas, with writing also appearing in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and Elle Canada. She is also a fiction writer, represented by Carolyn Forde at the Transatlantic Agency.

Casey Milone is a lifelong marketing copywriter and speculative fiction author. His debut novel, ALGO (2023), explores the edges of technology and imagination. After an early career in agencies, he moved in-house as a creative director, shaping work for Alaska Airlines, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. He is currently the CEO of the AI startup Numonic.

Danielle Krysa is the writer behind The Jealous Curator (est. 2009), a contemporary art platform loved by creatives worldwide. She’s an artist, curator, and bestselling author of books including Creative Block and Your Inner Critic Is a Big Jerk. Danielle has spoken at TEDx, PIXAR, and CreativeMornings, and her latest book, Real Artists Wear Black (and Other Lies About Being Creative), arrives Fall 2026.

Dave Deveau (he/they) is an award-winning writer whose work explores queer themes with wide-reaching resonance. His plays have been produced across North America and Europe. He is Co-Artistic & Managing Director of Carousel Theatre for Young People and a founding leader of Zee Zee Theatre. His acclaimed work includes My Funny Valentine, Elbow Room Café: The Musical, and plays for young audiences that foster dialogue. He is published by Talonbooks and continues to develop new work for stage.

Jody Carrow has worked professionally with words since 2004, drawing on her degree in Creative Writing and Political Science. Her writing and editing spans poetry, novels, political speeches, marketing, websites, grants, memoirs, and manuals. She loves uncovering each project’s unique voice and shaping language to match. In 2022, Jody became a paralegal and now balances freelance editing with legal drafting, while running, practicing yoga, singing in a choir, and keeping up with her teenagers.

Jonathan Hennessey is a New York Times bestselling author and digital creative whose nonfiction graphic novels turn rigorous scholarship into vivid, accessible storytelling. His books include The Comic Book Story of Beer, The Comic Book Story of Video Games, and Alexander Hamilton: The Graphic History. His work has been published internationally, recognized by major libraries, and adapted across academia, media, and pop culture. He lives in Victoria, BC, and is currently writing a genre-bending

Kristina Campbell is a science writer exploring the hidden worlds of gut health and microbiology for audiences across Europe and North America. Working alongside leading scientists, she has published hundreds of pieces in print and online. Her five books range from an academic textbook for dietitians to Gut Health For Dummies and IBS For Dummies. She delights in making science human, lively, and accessible.

Trained as a Russianist, Niobe Thompson began his filmmaking life in the Russian North, fixing BBC documentaries while completing doctoral studies at Cambridge. He later returned to Canada to tell expansive human and natural histories for CBC’s The Nature of Things and PBS’s NOVA. His films have reached millions worldwide, earning major international awards, including a 2025 Emmy for Hunt for the Oldest DNA. He is the founder of Victoria-based Handful of Films.

Robert J. Wiersema is the author of six books, including the bestselling novel Before I Wake, a Globe and Mail Best Book published internationally. His novella The World More Full of Weeping was shortlisted for the Aurora Award. A creative writing professor at Vancouver Island University, he is also a longtime bookseller and prolific freelance writer. Robert lives in Victoria, where his most recent book, Seven Crow Stories, was written.

Shane Book is a poet, filmmaker, and professor in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria. Educated at Western, UVic, NYU, Temple, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, his work appears in Poetry, The Walrus, and PN Review. His books Ceiling of Sticks and Congotronic won major awards, and his films have screened at 50+ festivals worldwide. His latest collection, All Black Everything, was published by University of Iowa Press.

Sharon is a digital creator whose work follows a non-linear path through marketing, technology, and entrepreneurship. Her background includes leading digital experience initiatives for NVIDIA, launching media platforms like Digital Entrepreneur for Redbrick Technologies, and creative and educational work for Shift Browser and Easy Vegan. She brings vibrancy to her projects, drawing on lived experiments to explore identity, work, and home in a digital world.

Stacey McLachlan is editor-in-chief of Vancouver Magazine and a senior editor at its sister publication, Western Living. A finalist for Best Lifestyle Publication at the 2025 National Media Awards, she also writes regularly for Dwell, Hootsuite, and a range of editorial, content marketing, and creative clients. With over two decades in print and digital publishing, Stacey’s work spans design, architecture, culture, and humour.

Tim Lindsay is the founder and CEO of Tellwell Publishing, a Canadian-owned assisted self-publishing company he launched in 2015 to help authors share their stories. With two decades in media and publishing, he’s guided over 6,000 writers across genres to publish books that build authority, impact and legacy. He’s also the author of The Call to Authorship, a strategic nonfiction guide for aspiring writers.