Gary Barwin is a writer, composer and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 26 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long-listed for Canada Reads.

A PhD in music composition, Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at University of Toronto (Scarborough), Laurier, Western University, McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library, Hillfield Strathallan College, Sheridan College and Young Voices E-Writer-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library. He has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities, to at-risk youth in Hamilton through the ArtForms program and currently mentors through the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. His writing has been published in hundreds of magazines and journals internationally and his writing, music, media works and visuals have been presented and broadcast internationally. Though born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashenazi descent, Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

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Lillian Necakov was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1960 and now lives in Toronto. She is the editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, a literary small press. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, etc, in Canada, USA, and Europe, and forthcoming in China. Some of her books include Cowboy in Hamburg (Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, 1988), Listen (Pink Dog, 1988), Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak & Wynn, 1989) and Polaroids (Coach House, 1999).

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