2026-27 Mentors
LAURIE D. GRAHAM
Laurie D. Graham grew up in Treaty 6 Territory, outside of amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she has lived in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough, Ontario) in the Territory of the Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg, since 2018, where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine.
Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Award for Poetry. Her fourth book, Calling It Back to Me, will be out with McClelland & Stewart in 2026.
Laurie is also an editor of poetry and prose with two decades of experience working with literary journals in Canada.
For more about Laurie, visit her website.
Photo credit: Jason Graham
TIM LILBURN
Tim Lilburn lives in the Bowker Creek watershed in W̱SÁNEĆ territory on Vancouver Island. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Harmonia Mundi, The House of Charlemagne, and The Names. His poetry has received the Governor General’s Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, the European Medal of Poetry and Art (the Homer Medal), the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award and The Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence among other prizes.
Lilburn is also the author of four essay collections, Living In The World As If It Were Home, Going Home, The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place, and Numinous Seditions: Interiority and Climate Change.
He has taught at the University of Victoria, the University of Saskatchewan, St. Peter’s College and Middlebury College.
Photo credit: UVic Photo Services
MADELEINE THIEN
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver and lives in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of five books, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Folio Prize, and won the 2016 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction.
Her most recent novel, The Book of Records, was longlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award and for The Climate Fiction Prize 2026, included on President Obama’s list of favourite books of 2025, and named a book of the year by The New Yorker, The Guardian, Time, and The New York Public Library. Madeleine’s novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages, and her writing can be found in The New Yorker, Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Review of Books.
As well as being a mentor for USask's MFA in Writing program, she teaches in Brooklyn College's MFA Program and in the Granta Writers’ Workshop.
Photo credit: Rawi Hage
LYNN COADY
Lynn Coady is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter who lives in Nova Scotia.
Coady's collection of short stories Hellgoing won the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her 2011 novel, The Antagonist, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and published in the US by Alfred A. Knopf.
She has published seven books of fiction and her work has appeared in the UK, Germany, Holland and France. Her most recent novel is Watching You Without Me, published by House of Anansi in Fall, 2019 and Knopf US in June 2020.
Lynn's eighth book of fiction is a collection called The Money, coming in Spring 2027 with House of Anansi.
She often writes for television and is developing feature films.
For more information about Lynn Coady, visit her website.
JENNA BUTLER
Jenna Butler is an author and scholar whose research into endangered environments has taken her from America’s Deep South to Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, and from Tenerife to the Arctic Circle, exploring the ways in which we impact the landscapes we call home.
Butler is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion. Her award-winning collection of ecological essays is A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail, and her environmental travelogue, Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard, was released by the University of Alberta Press in Autumn 2018.
Butler’s latest work is the essay collection Revery: A Year of Bees, released in 2020 with Wolsak & Wynn.
For more information about Jenna Butler, visit her website.
JOHN ELIZABETH STINTZI
John Elizabeth Stintzi (they/she) is a writer, photographer, cartoonist, and editor who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario.
Their work has been awarded the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and the Sator New Works Award. JES is the author of the acclaimed novels My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments, as well as the short story collection Bad Houses, the poetry collection Junebat, and the comic The Children of Gulga-Krü.
Their latest novel Guest Services at the Museum of Sexual Deviance will be released by Arsenal Pulp Press.
For more information about John Elizabeth Stintzi, visit their website.
Submitted photo.
MARINA ENDICOTT
Marina Endicott is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Marina is the recipient of the 2026 Prairie Grindstone Prize, a $50,000 annual prize which is awarded in acknowledgement of a writer’s body of work and “their contribution to the public’s appreciation for, and understanding of, Western Canada’s landscape, people, history, and culture.”
Her novel Good to a Fault won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. It was a finalist for the Giller Prize and was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC award.
Her next novel, The Little Shadows, was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award. Close to Hugh was longlisted for the Giller Prize and named one of CBC's Best Books of 2015. The Difference won the City of Edmonton Robert Kroetsch Prize. It was published in the US by W. W. Norton as The Voyage of the Morning Light in June 2020.
Her latest book, The Observer, won the City of Saskatoon Book Prize and the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award in 2023.
Photo credit: Jacqueline Baker
CANDACE SAVAGE
Candace Savage was born in the Peace River Country of northern Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta. She is the award-winning author of more than two dozen books including A Geography of Blood, which won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and Prairie: a Natural History, winner of the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, she was inducted into the Honor Roll of the Rachel Carson Institute, Chatham College, in Pittsburgh in 1994. In 2022, she received both the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence and the Matt Cohen Award in Celebration of a Writing Life.
In addition to her work as a writer, she plays accordion in the Saskatoon Fiddle Orchestra, serves as chair of Wild about Saskatoon and co-chair of the Northeast Swale Watchers, and sits on the national council of The Writers Union of Canada.
She also edits an online anthology entitled This Singing Land kanikamot askiy.
She shares her time between Saskatoon and Eastend, Saskatchewan.
- from candacesavage.ca