Born in Quebec and raised in Northern Ontario, Colleen Murphy won the 2016 and 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for her plays Pig Girl and The December Man (L’homme de décembre) respectively. Both plays were also awarded the Carol Bolt Award. Her other plays include The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius, I Hope My Heart Burns First, The Piper, and Beating Heart Cadaver, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She is also a librettist and an award-winning filmmaker. She has been the writer-in-residence at six Canadian universities and playwright-in-residence at two Canadian theatres, as well as the Finborough Theatre in the UK. She lives in Toronto.
Siobhan Arnatsiaq-Murphy has been a traditional Inuit drum dancer and choreographer for over twenty years. She also earned a law degree and has worked as a policy analyst. Siobhan lives in Iqaluit and has three wonderful daughters.
Janet Tamalik McGrath grew up between traditional Inuit and modern influences in the 1970s Canadian Arctic, in the Nattilingmiut region. A fluent speaker of Inuktut and lifelong language proponent, her doctoral work at Carleton University challenged Canadian academic norms by foregrounding Inuktut while also creating a unique bridge between epistemologies. She published this research in her book, The Qaggiq Model: Toward a Theory of Inuktut Knowledge Renewal, in 2018. As Nattilingmiutut dialect translator for The Breathing Hole, she brings over forty years of personal and professional experience in bridging cultures, time spans, and historical contexts.
