Phillipa Chong is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her thesis examines how we determine “quality” in the arts.

Liam Considine is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. He is currently conducting research in Paris for his dissertation on Pop art in France.

Dylan Gordon is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, researching how nature, technology and “the good life” manifest in the growing, sharing and eating of food.

Before Birgitta Jónsdóttir became a member of the Icelandic Parliament in April 2009 she worked as a writer, artist, activist, web developer, designer.

Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto (Coach House, 2010), Senior Editor at Spacing Magazine and a 2011-2012 Massey College Canadian Journalism Fellow. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Tim Ormond defended his doctoral dissertation on Illustrated Editions of Anna Karenina in the Spring of 2011. He has taught courses in Russian literature and film as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria. He has poetry and illustrations published in Canadian journals such as Carousel, Existere and Misunderstandings Magazine.

Simon Reader is a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Toronto. He is co-editor of Penned: Animals in Zoos in Poems (Signal, 2009) and is writing a dissertation about uselessness in Victorian culture.

Brett Story is a writer and independent documentary filmmaker based out of Toronto. Her latest film, Land of Destiny (2010), is a portrait of a petrochemical town in paralysis in the wake of an epidemic of cancers. Brett has worked extensively as a freelance journalist, writing and producing video for publications such as The Nation, The Montreal Mirror, and This Magazine. The director of numerous non-fiction and experimental films, she also sits on the editorial board of Fuse magazine and the advisory board of the journal Upping the Anti. Brett is now currently working toward a PhD in geography at the University of Toronto.

Jessica Duffin Wolfe is the editor of The Toronto Review of Books.

Since 2005 Danny Zabbal has been working as an illustrator in a variety of media. His works include a full range of video games, and assorted comics featured online and in print, as well as the illustrations to three pieces in this issue: “University Calendar,” “Wake Up,” and “From the Windows the Alley.”