Despite the world taking our tongue-in-cheek schtick about world-ending scenarios a little too literally (we didn’t mean to give you ideas, universe) Broadcasts from the Wasteland is back! Typically we sit down in person with our guests, but this year we’re splitting up to the far corners of the bunker – which means we include from faraway, mystical places outside of Ontario, Canada. Check out our guests below, and stay tuned for their episodes!
Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and Kaleidotrope, and she wrote the interactive fiction game The Luminous Underground for Choice of Games. She serves as an Associate Editor at Escape Pod, is a 2019 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and lives with a robot in the sky above Toronto.
KT Bryski is a Canadian author, playwright, and podcaster. Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare, Lightspeed, PodCastle, Augur, and others. She’s won the Parsec and the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and she has been shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. KT co-chairs ephemera, a speculative fiction reading series occurring monthly in Toronto (or YouTube, depending on COVID-19).
KT is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing, and she is represented by Kim-Mei Kirtland of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. When she’s not writing, KT can be found frolicking through Toronto, enjoying choral music and craft beer.
Marcus Choi was most recently seen as George Washington in the National Tour of Hamilton. His other Broadway credits include Miss Saigon, Allegiance, Wicked, Times They Are a Changin, Sweet Charity, and Flower Drum Song. He has also had recurring TV roles in Blindspot, Luke Cage, The Last Ship, and Raising Hope. Marcus is a Canadian-born actor but was raised in Fullerton, California.
David Demchuk‘s debut The Bone Mother won the 2018 Sunburst Award for adult fiction, was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award, and became an Amazon number-one bestseller. His troubling new novel Red X will be published in Fall 2021 by Strange Light. David was born and raised in Winnipeg before making his home in Toronto, and has a special interest in queerness and monstrosity.
Cortni Fernandez is a member of the Can*Con programming team and a Toronto-based writer. She has appeared on panels at Can*Con and the Naked Heart festival, and read her short fiction at the ephemera reading series. She hopes to encourage more queer women of colour to join the Canadian SFF community. You can find her procrastinating on Twitter at @quartzfernandez.
Adrian Harewood is co-host of CBC News Ottawa. Harewood attended elementary and high school at Ashbury College, and was involved in community radio at CKCU (Carleton University) and CHUO (University of Ottawa). He has been a guest host on national CBC programs such as As it Happens, Sounds Like Canada and The Current. Before coming to television, Harewood was the host of All In A Day on CBC Radio One in Ottawa. He is currently an adjunct professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism & Communication.
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. He graduated from Ryerson University’s journalism program in 2002, and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and two sons.
Avi Silver is an author and editor of speculative fiction. They co-created The Shale Project, an award-winning indie arts collective, and are passionate about stories that wield tenderness as a tool of change. Their first novel, Two Dark Moons, was released in 2019, with the sequel due out Summer 2021. Find their short fiction in Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Anthology, and the web serial Tales from a Library. They are also an editor with Augur Magazine.
Tracy Townsend is the author of The Nine and The Fall (books 1 and 2 in the Thieves of Fate series), a monthly columnist for the feminist sf magazine Luna Station Quarterly, and an essayist for Uncanny Magazine. She’s the former chair of the English department at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, an elite public boarding school, where she teaches creative writing and science fiction and fantasy literature. She’s been a martial arts instructor, a stage combat and accent coach, a short-order cook for houses full of tired gamers, and now (apparently) a podcast co-host. When she’s actually sitting still, she lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois with two bumptious hounds, two remarkable children, one goblin cat, and a very patient husband.
Sienna Tristen is a Canadian artist and author of speculative fiction and poetry who explores queer platonic partnership, radical compassion, and mythmaking in their work. Her award-winning fantasy novel The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming came out from indie arts collective The Shale Project in 2018. A purveyor of many skills and talents, they can also lead a yoga class, speak to you in three and a half languages, and climb forty feet in the air on a pair of silks. You can find their poetry in Augur Magazine, and they are currently working on their second novel.
Derrick Williams most recently joined the Broadway company of The Book of Mormon, having come directly from the 1st National Tour. He was previously seen in the Las Vegas Company of The Lion King playing the role of Mufasa. His other Broadway credits include Wicked (Fiyero), Aida, and Swing and his TV credits include Heart of Dixie, Numbers, Ghost Whisperer, and Chapelle Show on Comedy Central. For my family.
John (@Wiswell) is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Nature Futures, among other fine venues. More about him can be found at http://johnwiswell.blogspot.com.