Evelyn Baker, Amy De Ruyte, and Peter Halasz
Executive Committee of WFC Toronto, 2012
Andrew Gurudata
Organizing the Constellation Awards, Toronto
Andrew Gurudata has been organizing various conventions, fan clubs, and other fandom activities in Montreal and Toronto since 1991. This includes having been the president of Montreal’s Doctor Who fan club for 4 years and having chaired Toronto’s annual “Toronto Trek” science fiction convention four times. He’s also a fandom DJ who has been DJing dances since 2006 at conventions such as “Ad Astra” (Toronto), “ConCept” (Montreal), “FutureCon” (Toronto), and one “WorldCon” (Montreal). For the past seven years, Andrew has been proud to be in charge of taking The Constellation Awards – Canada’s only awards celebrating excellence in science fiction film and television – from a vague idea to a reality. In his spare time, Andrew wonders what on earth “spare time” means.
Sandra Kasturi, Helen Marshall and James Bambury
Co-chairs of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, Toronto
Sandra Kasturi: The Co-Publisher at ChiZine Publications, Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer, and editor, as well as co-creator of a kids animated TV series. In 2005, she won ARC magazines annual Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words and the Co-Publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, Taddle Creek, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, Divine Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and sporadically runs her other imprint, Kelp Queen Press. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books). She is represented by the Anne McDermid Agency, and is currently working on her first novel, a mythological noir. She enjoys single-malt scotch, red lipstick, and Viggo Mortensen.
Helen Marshall: Helen Marshall is an author, editor, and bibliophile. Her poetry and fiction have been published in, among others, The Chiaroscuro, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com. Her poetry sequence Skeleton Leaves (Kelp Queen Press, 2011) won an Aurora Award for Best Speculative Poem, and in 2012 she released her debut fiction collection Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications), an exploration of history, memory and the cost of creating art. She is currently completing a Ph. D in medieval studies at the University of Toronto, for which she spends a great deal of her time staring at fourteenth-century manuscripts.
James Bambury: James Bambury’s short stories have been featured at AE Science Fiction Review, Daily Science Fiction, Ray Gun Revival and other publications. He hosts the Chiaroscuro Reading Series at Augusta House in Toronto whenever Sandra Katsuri lets him. jamesbambury.blogspot.ca
Sandra Kasturi and Laura Marshall
Co-Chairs, Toronto SpecFic Colloquium: Beyond the Human
Sandra Kasturi: The Co-Publisher at ChiZine Publications, Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer, and editor, as well as co-creator of a kids animated TV series. In 2005, she won ARC magazines annual Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words and the Co-Publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, Taddle Creek, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, Divine Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and sporadically runs her other imprint, Kelp Queen Press. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books). She is represented by the Anne McDermid Agency, and is currently working on her first novel, a mythological noir. She enjoys single-malt scotch, red lipstick, and Viggo Mortensen.
Laura Marshall: Laura Marshall has been the Marketing Director for ChiZine Publications, Co-Chair of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium, and worked with other literary organizations including the Chiaroscuro Reading Series and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She has also dabbled in creating book trailers for ChiZine Publications, the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium, and the 2012 World Fantasy Convention. Though not a writer herself, Laura has spent much of her life supporting literary types and can’t seem to stop. She is currently a marketer-at-large for ChiZine Publications.
Randy McCharles
Chair and Programming, When Words Collide, Calgary
Randy McCharles has been active in Calgary’s writing community for many years with a focus on dark, humorous (and often both) fantasy. In 2009 he received Canada’s most prestigious award for SF & F, the Prix-Aurora Award, for both short fiction and fan organization. In 2005 he co-chaired the Calgary Westercon, and in 2008 chaired the international World Fantasy Convention. In 2010 he conceived When Words Collide, chaired it’s very successful inaugural year (2011), and is chairing again for 2012. Randy is a long-time member of IFWA, the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, and in 2009 was published in Year’s Best Fantasy 9 (David Hartwell and Katheryn Kramer, ed). He is a regular contributor to the 10th Circle Project (available as eBooks from Amazon.com) and has several stories available in print from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.