Mishka Lavigne (she, her) is a playwright and literary translator. Her play, Havre, won a Governor General’s Literary Award (Drama – French, 2019). Her newest work, Copeaux, a poetic movement theatre creation developed with director Éric Perron, was produced in Ottawa in March 2020. It won the Prix littéraire Jacques-Poirier in February 2021 and a Governor General’s Literary Award in November 2021, and it was a finalist for the Prix Marcel-Dubé. Albumen, Lavigne’s first English-language work, won the Prix Rideau Award for best new creation in 2019 and the Quebec Writers’ Federation Playwriting Prize in 2020. Her works have been produced and developed in Canada, Europe, Australia, Haiti and the United States. She is currently working on a bilingual chamber opera libretto with Montréal composer Tim Brady, and her work, Shorelines, will soon be published by Playwrights Canada Press. Mishka Lavigne lives in the Ottawa/Gatineau area.

Neil Blackadder (he, him) is a translator of drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre, and recently retired from a 25-year career teaching theater at Knox College and Duke University. Neil’s translations have been staged in New York, London, Chicago, and elsewhere, and widely published. Playwrights Neil has translated include Lukas Bärfuss, Rebekka Kricheldorf, Ewald Palmetshofer, Ferdinand Schmalz, Mishka Lavigne, and Thomas Arzt. He is also the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience. (www.neilblackadder.com)