Joseph Howse writes fiction and poetry, as well as technical books on computer programming and image analysis. He lives in a Nova Scotian fishing village, where he chats with his cats and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees. His debut novel, The Girl in the Water , has won the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and 2023 IAN Awards for Outstanding Multicultural Fiction. The sequel, The Circus and the Atom , has won the 2026 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and for World Literature.

Allynn Riggs has been writing stories at an early age and after being nagged and cajoled by a determined collection of fictional characters for many years, she surrendered and shifted careers to tell their stories. She has never been as happy.