J'Ai Le Coeur Rempli de Bonheur

Monique Gray Smith is an award-winning, bestselling author and public speaker. Her books cover a broad spectrum of ages, topics and emotions. Woven into all of Monique’s writing and her speaking engagements is the teaching that Love is Medicine. Her books include Speaking our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation, My Heart Fills With Happiness, You Hold Me Up, Lucy and Lola, Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience, Tilly and the Crazy Eights, When We Are Kind, I Hope, Dreaming Alongside and Kohkom's First Drum. She has also created the young adult adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Monique is Cree and Scottish. She lives with her family on the Traditional Territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ Peoples.

Julie Flett is a Swampy Cree and Red River Métis artist and author. She studied fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal and Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. She won the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature for her work on When We Were Alone by David Robertson, and her book Birdsong won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. She is the three-time recipient of the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Award for Owls See Clearly at Night: A Michif Alphabet, Dolphin SOS and My Heart Fills With Happiness.

Over the past twenty years, Rachel Martinez has published more than eighty translations in various genres for renowned French-speaking publishers, including novels, biographies, essays and children's literature. She was part of the advisory board of the Banff International Literary Translation Center from 2017 until its dissolution in 2019, and served for several years on the board of directors of the Literary Translators Association of Canada. A mention on the 2014 Honor List of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and the 2017 Quebec Booksellers Prize (in the 12-17 years old, outside Quebec category) are among the marks of recognition she has received. In 2005, Rachel won the Canadian Governor General's Award in French translation for Glenn Gould, une vie by Kevin Bazzana and was a finalist in 2013 and 2015.