TAYLOR MARIE GRAHAM is an award-winning playwright, librettist, director, theatre scholar, and educator who lives in Cambridge, Ontario / Haldimand Tract. She has an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in theatre from the University of Guelph. She works as a sessional theatre professor at universities in Southwestern Ontario and is the Interim Community Engagement Officer at the International Institute in Critical Studies in Improvisation. Taylor has published in Canadian Theatre Review, Intermission Magazine, Routledge’s Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, The Conversation, and Canadian Literature. Critics have described her plays and operas as “arresting and funny” (The Slotkin Letter), “uncommonly cool” (Mooney on Theatre), “charmingly twisted” (Toronto Star), “powerful, and courageous” (OnStage), “meaningful to audiences of all ages” (Intermission), “darkly evocative” (Istvan Reviews), “psychological, theological, and ornithological” (Our Theatre Voice), “intriguingly oddball” (Broadway World), “skillfully blends dramatic and musical tones” (NOW), “magical” (OntarioStage), “searingly written” (Bill Mandel), and “profound, beautifully crafted” (StageDoor). Her play Post Alice, inspired by four short stories by Alice Munro, was produced at a local venue in Stratford, Ontario in July/August of 2021, then restaged at The Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story in Blyth, Ontario in June 2024. Her 2024 book Cottage Radio & Other Plays, including Post Alice, is published by Talonbooks.  In addition, Taylor has written an essay for the new, third volume of essays about Munro scheduled for publication by Guernica Editions under the editorship of J.R. (Tim) Struthers. Learn more about her at <www.taylormariegraham.com>.

Juani Guerra (Juana Teresa Guerra de la Torre) was born in the Canary Islands (Spanish Macaronesia) where she is presently Professor of English Language, Literature, and Culture at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC). Since 2021 she directs the Laboratory of Cognition and Cultural Health, at the Research Institute for Biomedical and Health Sciences (IUIBS-ULPGC). To further strengthen relations between the Humanities, Sciences, and Technologies, Juani Guerra coordinates a Seminar Series on Transversal Thought and Cultural Health focused on social recovering from advanced interdisciplinary knowledge on the literary mind and language as a biocultural niche and a cognitive symbolic artifact. Juani received her PhD in English and Literary Studies from the Complutense University of Madrid, Master Studies in Cognitive Neuroscience at La Laguna University in Tenerife, and in Spanish Literature at the ULPGC. Director of a PhD Program New Cognitive Perspectives Study of Language, Literature and Translation at ULPGC from 2003-2016, she has been invited as Scholar and Lecturer at Oslo U., U. Kent, U. C. Berkeley, Harvard U., U.C. San Diego, Syddansk U., U. Aarhus, and others in Spain. She was a Board Member Executive Committee International Society for the Short Story (2006-18). Her work focuses on the relationship between language, cognition, narrative, and culture, from a biopoetic, cognitive semiotic, and complex dynamic perspective. She is also an active translator of English novelists and short story writers into Spanish. As a literary writer she has published her own short stories in several journals in Spanish and English. She is the mother of two daughters, Claudia and Freiya, and the grandmother of two baby-grand-daughters Carmen and Gloria.

TBA