Dave Bidini is the only Canadian to have been nominated for both a Gemini, Genie and Juno as well CBC's Canada Reads. He is a respected musician and has made a terrific name for himself as a writer with the success of his books The Best Game You Can Name, Baseballissimo, On a Cold Road, and Tropic of Hockey. Bidini wrote and hosted the Gemini Award-winning small-screen adaptation of Tropic of Hockey, called Hockey Nomad, which was first broadcast in January, 2003. His most recent book is Writing Gordon Lightfoot.

BIDINIBAND features Dave Bidini, Don Kerr, Paul Linklater and Doug Friesen. The band's work includes the critically-acclaimed Land Is Wild and the just-released In The Rock Hall.

Linden MacIntyre is a co-host of the Fifth Estate and the winner of nine Gemini Awards for broadcast journalism. His bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award and his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2006, and won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize. His second novel, The Bishop's Man, was a #1 national bestseller, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year, and has been published in the U.K. and the U.S. and has been translated into eight languages. His latest novel is Why Men Lie.

Selina Martin is a Toronto-based art pop siren with a striking ear for melody, a gigantic stage presence, and an unforgettable voice. On top of it all, she's an incredibly high calibre songwriter with a deft and dexterous hand who has mastered the art of combining the deeply personal with the brightly accessible. She has independently released 3 critically acclaimed CD's: Space Woman, Life Drawing Without Instruction, and Disaster Fantasies, as well as a collaborative recording with Dave Bidini, Martin Tielli, Ford Pier and Barry Mirochnick based on stories from Bidini's book, Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica.

Her most recent release, Disaster Fantasies, is a fierce collection of genre-defying tunes variously described by music writers as "smart", "vivid", "brave", "masterful", "reckless", "must-hear", and "without question the most underrated Canadian album of the year".

The Billie Hollies are Julia Hambleton, Donna Linklater, Coralie Martens and Janet Morassutti. Their music, combining enticing vocals and rich arrangements, has been called "an expression of classic femininity and a kind of eerie beauty." (Tom Powers, CBC Deep Roots)

The Lazy Bones, which began as recording project for East Coasters Matt Wells and Tim MacNeill, has grown into a seven-piece band that channels the musical ghosts of bluegrass, reggae and old-time country music, and has shared stages with artists like Great Big Sea, Tom Cochrane and Levon Helm. Armed with a debut album, featuring guests Jill Barber and Huey Lewis, and a band rounded out by multi-instrumentalists Andrew Schaak and Dwayne Gale, singers Alex Wells and Stella Panacci, and percussionist Danno O'Shea, Lazybones is bringing their hillbilly-reggae vibe to every stage and kitchen they can find.

Micah Toub grew up in Denver, Colorado. He attended McGill University and now resides in Toronto, where he writes on psychology and other topics, including a biweekly column on relationships from a male point of view for The Globe and Mail.

Chip Zdarsky/Steve Murray is an artist and writer with the National Post, where his column, "Extremely Bad Advice," appears every Thursday. He's contributed to a whole bunch of other publications as well and won a bunch of awards. No big deal."

Corin Raymond is an acclaimed singer and songwriter. album, There Will Always Be Small Time, went to #5 on the roots charts in the United States and was nominated for two Independent Music Awards. It won the popular vote for alt-country album. His songs have been covered by a number of artists, including Dustin Bentall, Treasa Levasseur, Patricia O'Callaghan, Scott Nolan, Romi Mayes, Andrew Neville and the Poor Choices and Jonathan Boyd, to name but a few.

Claudia Dey is a novelist, playwright and columnist. She wrote the weekly Group Therapy and Coupling columns for The Globe and Mail and Toro magazine's sex column under the pseudonym, Bebe O'Shea. Her plays have been produced internationally and include Trout Stanley and The Gwendolyn Poems, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. Her debut novel, Stunt, was chosen by The Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire as Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Her non-fiction follow-up, How to Be a Bush Pilot: A Field Guide to Getting Luckier is published by HarperCollins. Dey lives in Toronto where she is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.

Benjamin Errett is managing editor, features at the National Post and the author of the book Jew and Improved: How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man (HarperCollins, 2010), which was shortlisted for The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.