Elizabeth Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of tremendous powers of understanding and sympathizing with real people and human situations. Her books are full of empathy and wry humour which has made her one of Canada’s beloved literary icons.

Her first novel, A Student of Weather, was a finalist for the Giller Prize, which she won in 2007 for her novel Late Nights on Air. She has twice been a finalist for the Governor-General’s Award. She was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and won another of the Writer’s Trust prizes – the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction in 2018 for her latest book All Things Consoled.

A repeat visitor to the Readers’ Festival, Elizabeth Hay is a favourite.

Peter Robinson is a national treasure in two nations – Canada and the U.K. He is the prolific and award-winning author of the literary Inspector Banks crime novels, which are set in Yorkshire. The books, which now number twenty-five, are gripping police procedurals that have been produced for ITV in the UK by Left Bank Pictures. Five series were produced and shown on PBS in North America. They are currently available on Hulu.

Linda Spalding was born and raised in Kansas before immigrating to Canada in 1982 from Hawaii. She is the author of The Purchase, which won the Governor-General’s Literary Award in 2012. She has written three earlier novels and two works of non-fiction: The Follow, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Awards and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize; and more recently the wonderful and chilling Who Named the Knife. She is a recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the Canadian literary Community. She lives in Toronto, where she is an editor of Brick magazine.

Michael Ondaatje is well known to Canadian readers of poetry and fiction and movie goers. Born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), he immigrated to Canada in 1962 to attend Bishop’s University and the University of Toronto. He later taught at the University of Western Ontario and Glendon College at York University.

His work has attracted serious critical and popular attention since the release of The Collected Works of Billy the Kidd, which won the Governor General’s Award. Many of his novels have won important literary prizes including: The Booker Prize for The English Patient, which was also made into the Academy Award winning movie of 1997; the Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Government General’s Award for Anil’s Ghost; and another Governor General’s Award for Divisadero.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter and Divisadero have been adapted for the stage and produced in theatrical productions across North America and Europe.

In 1988 Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada which was upgraded in 2016 to Companion of the Order of Canada.

He has made a significant contribution to the development of up-and-coming writers through his long association with Coach House Books, where he acts as a poetry editor.

This is his second visit to The Port Medway Readers’ Festival. Michael will be reading from his newly released book Warlight.