Creating Mentorship for Deaf and Disabled Writers

Lene Andersen is an award-winning writer, health and disability advocate, and photographer. She writes books that centre the lived experience of disability and chronic illness, including two published nonfiction books on living well with chronic illness, and a prose poem on chronic pain, and is currently writing her first novel. Lene has an MSW with a background in human rights and health reporting, and her writing is informed by these perspectives, as well as her own experience with lifelong chronic illness and disability. She lives in Toronto with a pack of cats and too many books. Photo: David Govoni. 

Jenn Ashton is an award-winning Sḵwx̱wú7mesh author, visual artist, filmmaker, and historian. Her most recent book, Growing My Way Home: Stories of Resilience and Care (Talonbooks, 2026), was released to critical acclaim and has already received an honourable mention in Indigenous Voices from the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society’s Book Awards for BC Authors. She is an authenticity reader for several leading publishing houses in Canada and the U.S. and a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity. Photo: CBR Photography.

Kate Gies is a writer and educator living in Toronto, where she teaches creativity-based and trauma-informed courses at George Brown Polytechnic. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, and the Best Canadian Essays 2024 Anthology. Her memoir, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished, about her childhood medical experiences related to a missing ear, was named a best book of 2025 by CBC Books and the Winnipeg Free Press. Photo: Will O’Hare.

Sydney Hegele is the author of Bird Suit (Invisible Books, 2024) and The Pump (Invisible Books, 2021). They are the winner of the ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction, and a finalist for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature and the Trillium Book Award. Their essays have appeared in the Toronto Star, Catapult, Electric Literature, and many others. Their essay collection Bad Kids: A Polyphony is forthcoming with Invisible Books in 2028. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto). Photo: Ponder Photography.

A Governor General finalist in nonfiction, Rowan McCandless is the Black and biracial author of Persephone’s Children: A Life in Fragments (Dundurn Press, 2021). She writes from Calgary which is located on Treaty Seven territory. Her award-winning fiction and creative nonfiction appear in print, online journals, and anthologies; most recently a contributor to The Disability Gains anthology and Rose Metal Press: A Field Guide to the Lyric Essay. She is the creative nonfiction editor with The Fiddlehead and the First Vice-Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada.

Emma McKenna is a feminist, bi, and disabled writer. She received her PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University. Emma is the author of the poetry books Gold Star and Chenille or Silk. Recently, her poetry has been published in The Fiddlehead: The Disability Issue, Eavesdrop Magazine's Our Queer Histories Anthology, and FeelsZine: The Disability Issue. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, and raised in Alberta and Southern Ontario, she currently lives in the Waterloo Region with her husband and two Shih Tzus.

Charlie Petch (they/he) is a disabled & transmasculine multidisciplinary artist. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award, and was named “Best of 2021” by The Walrus. Their new collection Infinite Audition, launched in Fall 2025 with Brick Books. Petch received a Golden Beret Spoken Word Prize from the League of Canadian Poets. Their play No one’s special at the hot dog cart debuted in 2024 with Theatre Passe Muraille and Public Energy. They write plays, librettos, poems, and music and perform their work for audiences all over Turtle Island.

In 2027, Bruce Hunter’s new and selected poetry his fourteenth book will be published by Calgary’s Frontenac House, and his bilingual poetry collection, La bella sequenza, will appear in Italy. In 2025, his award-winning, best-selling novel In the Bear’s House, about a young deaf boy who finds love and redemption in the Canadian Rockies was rereleased by Frontenac House. In 2024, it was translated as Nella casa dell’orso in Italy. Deafened as an infant, and afflicted with low vision nearly all his life, Bruce’s poetry, fiction, reviews, interviews, translations, and creative nonfiction have appeared in over 100 blogs, journals, and anthologies internationally.

Ishaa Vinod Chopra is an award-winning author, RECE, and Guelph University MSc. thesis candidate in Critical Family and Kinship Studies with a collaborative specialization in Gender, Sexualities, and Bodies. She founded Finding Order in Disorder Foundation — a non-profit and arts collective — named after her memoir, seeking to explore projects such as hybrid podcasts, therapeutic dance, and community engagement for mental wellness. An immense source of inspiration has been her Indian classical dance Kathak teacher Guru Maneesha Tai Sathe ji, and her current research supervisor and mentor, Dr. Adam W.J.Davies.

Brandon Wint is an Ontario-born poet, spoken word artist, educator, and filmmaker based in Vancouver. For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performance poet, having shared his work all over Canada, and internationally at festivals and showcases in the U.S., Australia, Jamaica, Latvia, and Lithuania. Brandon’s poems and essays have been published in The Ex Puritan, Event Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Black Writers Matter, among other places. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry. In recent years, his films have screened at DOXA documentary film festival, Reelworld Film Festival, and Vancouver International Film Festival Centre.