Connect With Our Guests
This event couldn’t happen without the many guests who come and participate in our scheduled programming! Learn all about who they are and where their expertise lies in the panels below.
Major Guests
Author Holly Schofield
Author William Gibson
Guest of Honour
Concept Artist Eric Chu
Programming Guests
Toren Atkinson
Lead singer for the Cthulhu rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, illustrator for D&D and Call of Cthulhu, storyboard artist for Marvel/Disney, co-creator of Spaceship Zero TTRPG, podcaster (Caustic Soda)
Noah Chinn
Born in Oshawa and eager to escape it, Noah moved to Vancouver before working in Japan for three years as an English teacher, and five years in England at a bookstore. Upon returning to Canada, he began working as an editor for a romance publisher, then a freelance editor when the company closed. He’s been self-publishing novels and comics for the last several years.
David Falk
David A. Falk is the multiple award-winning author of Reliquary of the Dead. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, and holds three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool. He has published in lexicography, Bible interpretation, religious ritual, Egyptology, iconography, and archaeometallurgy. He has worked for over twenty years as a computer engineer for companies that include IBM, Oracle and Disney.
Kiara Falk
Kiara Falk is a peer-reviewed, published bioethicist and futurist who is deeply interested in the ethics of new technologies and transhumanism.
Susan Forest
Susan Forest is the author of dual Aurora Award-winners Bursts of Fire (2019) and Flights of Marigold (2020) as well as Gathering of Ghosts (2023), and over 25 internationally published short stories (Analog Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Fact, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others). She also edits an award-winning anthology series for Laksa Media Group, and in 2021 she was Editor Guest of Honour at Keycon. Rivers of Ivy, first in her Addicted to Heaven: The Next Generation series, is an epic fantasy romcom heist!
Lena Gibson
A voracious reader from childhood onward, Lena Gibson seeks wonderful books in which to escape. She loves interesting characters and fast-paced, emotional narratives, which lead her to write genre-defying stories in multiple categories. While her books span disaster romance, time slip, dystopian adventure, and sports romance, all are about love, resilience, and hope.
Catherine Girczyc
Cat Girczyc writes female-driven SF&F. She’s won two Auroras. Her stories are in Amazing Stories, On Spec, Pulp Literature, Polar Borealis, Neo-Opsis, The Vancouver Sci-Fi Magazine, Sally Port Magazine, The Unhelpful Encyclopedia: MurderBugs, and Tesseracts. Cat’s sold 15 Canadian television episodes to shows like the dark fantasy The Collector and cult animated Cybersix. She’s also presented at two WorldCons about writing TV shows.
Jonathon Greenall
Jonathon Greenall is a queer writer, TTRPG designer, podcaster, and content creator based in Vancouver, Canada. Their TTRPG work has earned multiple ENNIE and CRIT nominations, and their writing has appeared on numerous sites, including Polygon, Nintendo Life, Unwinnable, and Nighttide. They also contributed to Lost In Cult’s Console Chronicles and Ninty Media’s PokeBook, GameBook Advance, and NesBook.
Wren Handman
Wren Handman is a queer novelist, screenwriter, and video game writer. She has published eight speculative fiction novels for both adult and teen audiences. Her latest novel is a cozy paranormal thriller called A Midnight So Deadly. Wren was the lead writer for the award-winning sitcom The Switch, and is a co-founder of Ludic Lemur Entertainment, where she is the Creative Director.
Paula Johanson
Author of 42 books on dozens of topics for educational publishers. Now I’m a small press publisher.
Joshua Kamin
J. Herrera Kamin is a speculative fiction author and novelist from Vancouver, Canada. He specializes in all things weird, psychedelic and fantastical. Since 2017, his short stories have appeared in a variety of print and web publications, as well as in audiobook form. His first novel Morgana Wynd was released in 2025.
JM Landels
In addition to her work as a writer, editor, artist, and publisher, JM Landels teaches swordplay and riding — sometimes both at the same time — at her school, Academie Cavallo, in Langley, BC. She draws on this experience, allong with her time as a rock musician and childbirth educator, to inform her fantasy trilogy, Allaigna’s Song. She is currently working on a new series, La Bergère, featuring a shepherdess-turned-spy in seventeenth-century France.
Olga Lebed
Olga Lebed is a Vancouver-area author with a background in mathematics, education, engineering, and software development. She holds an M.Sc. in Mathematics Education from Simon Fraser University and has taught mathematics at SFU and BCIT. Together with Professor Igor Karnovsky, D.Sc., she has co-authored several academic and technical books published by McGraw-Hill and Springer. Their latest work, Voices of the Past. Origins, is an illustrated historical time-travel adventure that introduces young readers and adults to the remarkable thinkers and scientific discoveries of Ancient Greece.
Claire McCague
Claire McCague is an author, scientist, musician, playwright, and science fiction fan. She works on sustainable energy systems and plays with words and arpeggios. Her novels, The Rosetta Man and The Rosetta Mind (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing), are first-contact thrillers that begin with a pair of visitors who are most interested in climbing the nearest tree.
Jenni Merrifield
Jenni Merrifield is the current president of the West Coast Science Fiction Association (WCSFA) and Event Manager for VCON 44. She has attended VCON since the early 1990s and helped run it in many capacities since 2007. She also served as Event Manager for WCSFA’s one-off events, “Here Be Dragons!” in 2024 and “CONnections” in 2025. Her fannish favourites include D&D and Pathfinder, jigsaw puzzles, Star Wars, the Honorverse, Firefly/Serenity, Good Omens, and Girl Genius. She’s excited to help bring VCON back into the world and looks forward to being part of its adventures for many years to come.
Nina Munteanu
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist, novelist and award-winning short story author of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. Nina teaches writing at UofT and writes for various magazines on science and futurism. Her short work has appeared in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Chiaroscuro, subTerrain, Apex Magazine, Metastellar, and several anthologies. She currently has ten novels published and several non-fiction books on writing and science. Her book Water Is… (Pixl Press) — a scientific study and personal journey as a limnologist, mother, and teacher—was Margaret Atwood’s pick in 2016 in the New York Times ‘The Year in Reading.’ In 2020, Inanna Publications published Nina’s award-winning eco-novel, A Diary in the Age of Water. Her latest book, Gaia’s Revolution, is a climate-thriller released by Dragon Moon Press in 2026. Her eco-novel Thalweg will be released by Inanna Publications in Spring 2027.
Jam Myness
Jam is a Canadian comicker (artist and writer) based in BC, Canada. They are creating new fiction and nonfiction works aimed at enabling a solarpunk future. Their portfolio and works are collected on Jammyness.com. They are also a professional mechanical engineer with over a decade of experience in sustainable technologies.
Rhea Rose
Rhea Rose writes speculative fiction and poetry and edits Polar Starlight, a Canadian speculative poetry magazine. She is a 2026 Aurora Award recipient and a five-time Aurora Award nominee, as well as a Rhysling Award nominee and recipient of several Ellen Datlow honourable mentions. Her work explores strange possibilities, dark imaginings, and the unsettling corners of the familiar.
KT Katherine Wagner
KT Wagner writes speculative fiction and poetry in the garden of her Maple Ridge, BC home. Her work is published and podcast in Pulp Literature, On Spec, Flash Fiction Online and Cosmic Horror Monthly, among others. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). She organizes writer events, including Golden Ears Writers, and works to create literary community. KT’s debut short story collection, A Key in Her Heart and Other Subversions, is forthcoming in the fall of 2026 from Trepidatio Publishing.
Casey Wolf
Casey June Wolf writes poetry and short stories, and is the author of Finding Creatures & Other Stories. She lives in East Vancouver, despite her computer insisting she’s in Burnaby. She has been a Fan for centuries.