Christian Quesnel is the author and illustrator of several award-winning comic books, including Cœurs d’Argile, Ludwig, Félix Leclerc: L’alouette en liberté, and Vous avez détruit la beauté du monde, which won the Grand prix de la ville de Québec in 2021. In fall 2008, he became the first comic strip artist to win the Prix à la création artistique from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for his body of work. He holds a master’s degree in museology and arts practices from the University of Quebec in Outaouais, in Gatineau, where he is currently a doctoral student.
Shiri Pasternak is the co-founder and former research director at Yellowhead Institute, currently on a research leave from the Institute. She is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her book, Grounded Authority, published by the University of Minnesota Press, is an in-depth critique of the federal land claims policy in Canada from the perspective of Algonquin law, and was published in 2017. It won the Canadian Studies Network Book Prize in 2017 and the Western Political Science Association Clay Morgan Award for Best Book in Environmental Political Theory. It also won an honourable mention from the Association & Anthropology, Legal Studies Association Book Prize. Pasternak is the co-author of three major Indigenous policy analysis reports published by the Yellowhead Institute, as well as numerous briefs on issues like critical infrastructure, international law, and abolition. She is a frequent contributor to national newspapers and magazines, receiving an honourable mention this year by the Digital Publishing Awards for her writing on the Wet’suwet’en conflict in 2020. She has also published academic writing in the South Atlantic Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Antipode, The New Brunswick Journal of Law, and Environment and Planning D. She writes about resource extraction, Crown-First Nations fiscal relations, police, and the relationships between capitalism and colonialism.
Daniel McNeil is a professor in the department of gender studies at Queen’s University and the Queen’s national scholar chair in Black studies. His scholarship and teaching in Black Atlantic studies explore how movement, travel, and relocation have transformed and boosted creative development, the writing of cultural history, and the calculation of political choices. He is the author of Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic (Routledge, 2010) and, with Yana Meerzon and David Dean, a co-editor of Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He lives in Tkaronto/Toronto.
Leslie Kern is the author of three books about cities, including Feminist City: A Field Guide. She is an associate professor of geography and environment and women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University. Her research has earned a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award, a National Housing Studies Achievement Award, and several national multi-year grants. She is also an award-winning teacher. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vox, Bloomberg CityLab, and Refinery29. Leslie lives in Sackville, New Brunswick (Mi’kma’ki) with her partner and cats.
Abby Stadnyk is a white settler scholar and community organizer based in amiskwaciy (Edmonton, Alberta). She is a founding member of Free Lands Free Peoples (FLFP), an Indigenous-led anti-colonial penal abolition group, as well as the Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta Abolition Coalition (SMAAC), a prairie region abolition coalition. She has published in Perilous Chronicle, Canadian Dimension, Kite Line Radio, and The Media Coop. Most recently, she served on the editorial collective for a special issue of Briarpatch magazine on prison abolition, featuring the writing and artwork of incarcerated people in Canada and the United States.
Peggy Nash is an advocate for labour rights and social justice in Canadian politics and the labour movement, as a long-time senior negotiator for the CAW (now Unifor). A former president of the federal New Democratic Party, she was a candidate for leader after the untimely death of Jack Layton. A candidate in several federal elections, she served as a Member of Parliament and was named Official Opposition Industry and Finance Critic. Nash is an educator, a frequent media commentator, a founding member of Equal Voice and a co-founder of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Women in the House program.
Crystal Lameman is a nêhiyaw mother of two and a proud member of the ᐊᒥᐢᑯᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐃᐧ ᐯᔭᑰᐢᑳᐣ ᐅᐢᑌᓯᒫᐅᐧᔭᓯᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ ᓂᑯᑖᐧᓯᐠ amiskosâkahikan nêhiyaw peyakôskân, ostêsimâwoyasiwêwin nikotwâsik Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Treaty Six, where she currently works as the government relations advisor and treaty coordinator. She is a researcher; policy analyst; and passionate Indigenous rights, Treaty, and environment defender, with a graduate degree in educational policy studies. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in counselling psychology. Crystal’s work is centred on the advancement of Indigenous economic, energy, and food sovereignty, and the realization of holistic wellness through her nêhiyaw ways of knowing and meaningful land-based practices.
Joël Laforest is a writer, researcher, and organizer living in Calgary (Treaty Seven), and a producer and founding member of the Alberta Advantage podcast. His research critically examines the history of social democratic politics in Canada, and his writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Canadian Dimension, The Sprawl, and Jacobin.
Emily Eaton is a professor in the department of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina, in Treaty Four. She is a white settler doing research, teaching, and service devoted to addressing the climate and inequality crises at local and national scales and mapping pathways to transition that rectify the unjust colonial relationship that Canada has with Indigenous Peoples and marginalized communities.