Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001) and three previous novels: Certainty (2006), Dogs at the Perimeter (2011) and Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016). Do Not Say We Have Nothing was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize, and won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, among other honours. Born in Vancouver, Madeleine lives in Montreal and teaches part-time at Brooklyn College at The City University of New York.

Matthew Stepanic is a queer writer who lives and works on Treaty 6 Territory in Edmonton. They are a co-author of the collaborative novel Project Compass and the author of Relying on that Body, a poetry chapbook about the queens of season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race. They edit and design chapbooks for Agatha Press, and they host and co-organize VERS/E, a monthly queer poetry open mic.