David A. Robertson is the author of When We Were Alone (2017 Governor General's Literary Award), The Barren Grounds (2020 Governor General's Literary Award finalist), and Back Water, winner of the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and currently lives in Winnipeg.

Kit Dobson is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. His book Field Notes on Listening was one of the CBC's top non-fiction titles of 2022. His first novel, We Are Already Ghosts, was released in spring 2024. In the fall semester of the 2024-2025 academic year, he taught a course on banned and challenged books that will inform his comments for this discussion.