Definitely Not a Novice

WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. His #1 nationally bestselling novels include First Snow, Last Light; The Custodian of Paradise; The Navigator of New York; and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Baltimore’s Mansion won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was nominated for sixteen national and international awards including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and was a Canada Reads finalist. In 2011, Johnston was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award honouring the work of a writer in mid-career. His memoir Jennie’s Boy won the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Literary Humour and was also a Canada Reads finalist, in 2025.

ELISABETH DE MARIAFFI is the critically acclaimed author of four books: the Giller Prize-nominated short story collection How to Get Along with Women and the thrillers The Devil You Know, Hysteria, and most recently, The Retreat, which won the 2022 NLBA Fiction Prize. Both Devil and Hysteria were named Globe and Mail Best Books and National Post Top 100 of the Year, and both were shortlisted for the prestigious Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, while The Devil You Know was also longlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award— and optioned immediately after publication. De Mariaffi has taught fiction and screenwriting at UBC, Memorial University and through the Humber School for Writers. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and is currently on faculty in the MFA (Fiction) program at the University of Kings College in Halifax.