Meet our guests!
Katrina Archer
Katrina Archer writes science fiction, fantasy, and (as Saskia Laine) romance. She has worked in video games, film, and aerospace, and is the editor of speculative climate fiction magazine Little Blue Marble. She can operate almost any vehicle that can’t fly, doesn’t believe in life without books or chocolate, and with her spouse puts up with the antics of a sweet potato and a chaos goblin masquerading as cats. Connect with her online at katrinaarcher.com.
Toren Atkinson
Toren Atkinson was raised on a ‘beefalo’ farm in Chilliwack BC, is the lead singer for the Cthulhu rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets and co-creator of the award-winning Spaceship Zero RPG. Toren has illustrated games like Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons, and provides art and storyboards for various Marvel and Star Wars animation, Agent King, and Last Kids on Earth. As an actor he’s appeared in Stargate: Atlantis and provided voices for Marvel Super Hero Adventures.
Sapha Burnell
Sapha Burnell is a renegade author, editor, producer and podcast host, known for cerebral and emotionally resonant science fiction and fantasy works. With a background in martial arts and a passion for lit theory and mythology, Sapha’s works, such as Usurper Kings, NEON Lieben, and the mythpunk Judge of Mystics Saga, have been praised for their exploration of queerness, faith, and the intersection of technology and humanity. As a structural editor for a small press, Sapha helps authors refine their works, on and off Twitch, where she focuses on education and live critique. As the co-host of the “We Aren’t Dead Yet” podcast, Sapha discusses literature, movies, and gamer culture. You can find her on social media @usurperkings and at www.saphaburnell.ca.
Kristi Charish
CANCELLED
Sadly, Kristi has had to cancel her appearance.
Kristi Charish is the author of KINCAID STRANGE and THE ADVENTURES OF OWL urban fantasy series. Kristi writes what she loves; adventure heavy stories featuring strong, savvy female protagonists, pop culture, and the occasional RPG fantasy game thrown in the mix. Kristi is also a recovering fly geneticist with a PhD and gratuitously uses her expertise throughout her fiction. When Kristi isn’t writing you can find her on her laptop making science comprehensible for entertainment media. If you look really closely, you might spot her in the background of the odd sci-fi movie.
Peter Darbyshire
Peter Darbyshire is the author of the Cross supernatural thriller series (The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, The Dead Hamlets, The Apocalypse Ark) as well as the books Has the World Ended Yet?, Please and The Warhol Gang. He lives in an eldritch safe house near Vancouver, where he spends far too much time organizing D&D campaigns.
Don DeBrandt
Don DeBrandt writes SF, urban fantasy, thrillers, police procedurals, and supernatural animal cozies under the pseudonyms DD Barant, Donn Cortez, Dixie Lyle and Don DeBrandt. He’s published twenty-four novels, numerous pop-culture essays and several short stories over the past thirty or so years. He’s also a digital artist with over 2000 pieces, a screenplay writer and playwright, and is the creator of the webcomic Supermythic Tales. He’s currently working on a YA Trilogy, The Anyverse Saga.
Linda DeMeulemeester
Linda DeMeulemeester’s first book, a spine-tingling middle-grade fantasy: The Secret of Grim Hill, won the Silver Birch and the Canadian Toy Testing Best Books. The series is now published by Wandering Fox – an imprint of Heritage Books. The Mystery of Croaker’s Island, selected for STEM by B.C. teachers is also published by Heritage and is a SF mystery for younger readers. Middle-grade Ephemia Rimaldi: Circus Performer Extraordinaire came out this year from Red Deer Press, and in 2026 another spine-tingly middle-grade book, Bottle Witch will be published by Orca.
Brad Finlayson
Brad Finlayson owns Game Point, a tabletop & video game retail store and design office on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, BC. Brad was introduced to tabletop and video gaming at just 5 years old when his Dad opened Astrocade and gave him the original version of Dungeons & Dragons. This was followed by playing Magic The Gathering with high-level players, still buying, selling, and organizing events. In 2000/2001, Brad attended video Game design school and published a tabletop game called Symetra, and is now developing the G-Aim system: a gaming system capable of playing a role-playing game, quick duelling card game, tactical miniatures game, and anything else you can imagine, using the same modular rules system. Brad has also been working on two massive worlds for the system: a futuristic evolving earth and an alien Dyson sphere, with massive storyboarded sagas and the first graphic novel under development. https://gamepointcentral.com/
Cat Girczyc
Cat Girczyc works as a technical communications manager while pursuing creative writing at night. She writes female-led stories, poems, and scripts, usually in science fiction or fantasy. She’s a Writer’s Guild of Canada member and has sold 15 television episodes, including two episodes of the dark fantasy The Collector and animated series such as Cybersix. Her short story The Lady M garnered a Finalist position in the Writers of the Future competition 2022 Qu.1. In 2024, she was a panelist at the writercon When Words Collide in Calgary, AB.
Liz Gordon
Liz Gordon is a professional game developer who also makes cute things from outer space. She has previously participated in the VCON art show, Fandom Bazaar, and Eastside Culture Crawl. Find her online at robotsandrocketships.com, On Instagram as @robotsandrocketships or in person at Vancouver Hack Space.
Wren Handman
Wren Handman is a queer novelist, screenwriter, and game writer. She has published eight speculative fiction novels, for both adult and teen audiences. Wren was the lead writer for the award-winning sitcom The Switch, and is a co-founder of Ludic Lemur Entertainment, where she is the Creative Director.
Stan Hyde
Stan Hyde is a member of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Associations Hall of Fame, the G-Fan (Godzilla fandom) Hall of Fame, and a recipient of the Mangled Sky-Scraper Award (given to both fans and professionals who have created or encouraged Godzilla films and fandom). Stan’s first convention was the 1973 WorldCon in Toronto when he was 17, and he has helped organize the annual G-Fest (Godzilla Fest) in Chicago since 1995. Professionally he is a film teacher, but he has written for Amazing Figure Modeller, Polar Borealis Magazine, Prehistoric Times, Mad Scientist, G-Fan Magazine and even wrote a comic story for The Girls of Ninja High School. At conventions he does panel presentations on literature and film, and also teaches folks how to build, paint, and generally get started with building model kits of imaginative subjects.
Bonnie Jacoby
Bonnie Jacoby writes young adult science fiction and fantasy novels set in the Pacific Northwest. As a child she hid in the forest to avoid chores and read without anyone finding her. Now she writes about ordinary heroes who discover just how special they can be. With a love of dragons and spaceships, Bonnie’s stories will transport you to a world both familiar and fantastical, where anything is possible if you just believe in yourself.
JM Landels
JM Landels, writer and illustrator of the Allaigna’s Song trilogy and co-founder of Pulp Literature Press wears far too many hats. The strange mix of a degree in Mediaeval English Literature, a misspent youth fronting alternative punk bands Mad Seraphim and Stiff Bunnies, and a career as a childbirth educator and doula informs her work. These days, when she isn’t writing, editing or drawing, she can be found heading up Academie Cavallo School of Mounted Combat in Langley BC where she swings swords and rides horses for fun and profit.
Holly Schofield
Holly Schofield travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of city and country life in western Canada. The author of over a hundred speculative short stories in genres ranging from hard science fiction to magical realism, her works are used in university curricula and have been translated into multiple languages. Stories have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Tesseracts, Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change, the Aurora-nominated Lazarus Risen, the Aurora-winning Second Contacts, the Aurora-winning Nothing Without Us Too, and many other publications throughout the world. Find her at hollyschofield.wordpress.com.
Ziggy Schutz
Ziggy Schutz (she/him/he/her) is a queer, disabled writer who is at all times looking for ways to make his favourite fairytales and horror stories reflect people who look a little more like her.
He has had over twenty-five short stories published in various places, and her first novella, Twice-Spent Comet, is coming out on December 3rd! If you like space mermaids, this one might be for you. You can find more about his writing at linktr.ee/ziggyschutz.
Lisa Smedman
Lisa Smedman is the author of 24 books, which include science fiction and fantasy novels, a murder mystery, alternative-history fiction, and non-fiction histories of Vancouver, as well as novels set in the AD&D Forgotten Realms universe and the Shadowrun universe. She has designed numerous adventures for the D&D game (primarily the Ravenloft and Dark Sun worlds), as well as for a host of other TTRPG games. A newspaper journalist and editor for more than 20 years, she currently teachesgame design at LaSalle College Vancouver and BCIT. Her website is: lisasmedman.wixsite.com/author
Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is a poet/writer/editor from the Sunshine Coast of BC, where she lives with her family and various semi- and entirely non-domesticated creatures in the middle of a sea of brush and brambles. She is an Aurora Award winner and her work has been long or short listed for the Rhysling Award, the Dwarf Stars Award, and The British Fantasy Award. Marcie’s third poetry collection, Midnight Comes Early, is available from Hiraeth Publishing, and she is the editor of Spaceports & Spidersilk, a fantasy and science fiction magazine aimed at readers aged nine and up.
George Tufnail
George Tufnail has been a model builder for nearly 56 years. He builds monsters and dragons, since he feels there are not enough Dragons in this world and is trying to rectify that problem. He loves to help others learn to build models of all types, and hopes his insights can be of benefit to all of you!
Corey Van Egdom
Corey Van Egdom is an independently published author under the pen name Moonlight Soldier. He has so far published the first novel in a series, Legends of Celosia Origins. His goal is to encourage creators of all walks of life to strive for their creative dreams. His own dream is to one day turn his fantasy novel into a video game series.
Beth Wagner
Beth Wagner is a self-published comic creator residing in Burnaby, BC Canada. Her comics include but are not limited to sci-fi, such as Space Trucking, slice of life comics such as Isaac & Lee, and fantasy noir detective, Sam Hawke. With the death of her father (who was an author), Beth has now taken up the mantle of editor and writer in order to publish her father’s books and build on his literary legacy. The most recent being the epic fantasy novel The Saga of Haram.
Krista Wallace
Krista Wallace is a fantasy writer, musician, audiobook narrator, podcaster, mother, Gran; a lover of pie, dark chocolate, and fine single malt scotch. She hails from Port Coquitlam, BC, where she sings jazz and tap dances (not usually at the same time). She is the author of the Gatekeeper series (books 4 & 5 coming out in a few months), Griffin & the Spurious Correlations, and short stories in Pulp Literature, Heart’s Kiss, electricspec, and 49th Parallels. Learn more at kristawallace.com.
