Annual Holiday Party

Darlene Madott

Jennifer Maruno

HUGH A.D. SPENCER

Hugh Spencer’s short fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies such as Descant, Interzone, On Spec and the Tesseracts series. Most of which have been reprinted in Why I Hunt Flying
Saucers and The Progressive Apparatus from Brain Lag Publishing. His novel Extreme Dentistry, also from Brain Lag, was released in 2014. Hugh has also adapted much of his work into audio dramas
which have been performed by Shoestring Radio Theatre for NPR’s Satellite Network. He’s been twice nominated for the Canadian Aurora Award, and his story “(Coping with) Norm Deviation” received an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction (2007). In May 2019, Hugh’s play “The Triage Conference“ was performed at the Scripted Toronto Theatre Festival; and his second novel The Hard Side of the Moon, was released in hardback in 2021. A collection of his radio dramas, The Fabulist Play Cycle was launched in 2024.

Hugh is founder and president of the Museum Planners Group and he has been consulting in the cultural field for over 30 years. In this capacity, Hugh was co-curator of the National Library of Canada’s exhibition on Canadian science fiction and fantasy, he also served as Chair of the Friends of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation for the Toronto Public Library system, President of SF Canada (the association of professional fantasy and science fiction writers) and acted as programming advisor for Allarcom Pay-Television’s CRTC application for a specialty science fiction channel.

David Nickle is an author and journalist living and working in Toronto. His fiction has been published in magazines, anthologies and online, and been adapted for television. In 1997, he and Edo Van Belkom won a Bram Stoker Award for their short story “Rat Food.” In 1993, he and Karl Schroeder co-wrote “The Toy Mill” and won an Aurora Award for short form work in English. Some of his stories are collected in Monstrous Affections, and Knife Fight and Other Struggles.

He is the author of several novels: Rasputin’s Bastards, The ‘Geisters, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism and Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination all available from Open Road Media. He is married to author and futurist Madeline Ashby.