Host & Judges

Host - Rachel Harry

Rachel Harry is the host of BookTelevision's literary affairs program The Word this Week.

After completing her studies at Lee Strasberg's Theatre Institute, in New York, Rachel's love of literature and language brought her back home to Toronto and to BookTelevision. She started as a producer and story editor for Richler, Ink., but soon moved in front of the camera. In 2005, Rachel became co-host of BookTelevision's flagship show The Word This Week and, this season, will host solo. Rachel has interviewed a multitude of writers ranging from Christopher Hitchens to Deepak Chopra to Michael Cunningham to Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Judge - Todd Babiak

Todd Babiak's first novel was called Choke Hold. His second book, The Garneau Block, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the City of Edmonton Book Prize. The Book of Stanley, his latest novel, is published by McClelland & Stewart. He is the culture columnist at the Edmonton Journal.

Judge - Minister Faust

Minister Faust is an Edmonton writer, broadcaster, English teacher and community organiser. He is the author of two widely-acclaimed Random House novels: the recently-released From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain (2007) and The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), which was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Locus Best First Novel Award, and the Compton-Crook Award. Minister Faust has written for Edmonton's Vue Weekly and See Magazine, Alberta Views and The Globe and Mail. As well, he has produced stories for CBC radio and is a national-award-winning community broadcaster on CJSR FM-88 in Edmonton. His popular blog is called The Bro-Log (ministerfaust.blogspot.com).

Judge - Melissa Edwards

Melissa Edwards is the Managing Editor of the International 3-Day Novel Contest. A former entrant herself, she took on the job as a way to prevent herself from ever trying the contest again. "It was an intense experience," she says, "but it was my first attempt at writing fiction. I don't think I can be held responsible for the result."

When she's not lugging around boxes of manuscripts or guiding panicked entrants through the contest, Melissa works as a freelance writer and as a "strange mapper" for Geist magazine. Her thematic maps of Canada, which gather the country's place names under themes like Sex and Meat (think Flesherton, Ontario), are a regular feature of the magazine and were recently collected in   The Geist Atlas of Canada, published by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Melissa is also a member of the editorial collective of Room magazine and she is the Vice Chair of the board of directors for Vancouver's Word on the Street literary festival. She was raised in Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, and has lived in Vancouver since 1988.