Judy LeBlanc is a writer from Fanny Bay, BC. Several of her stories and essays have been published in Canadian literary journals; a collection of her short stories, The Promise of Water, was published by Oolichan Books in 2017, and her novel, The Broken Heart of Winter, was published by Caitlin Press in 2023. She’s won the Sheldon Currie Fiction prize and the Islands Fiction contest, and she’s been a runner-up for fiction contests with Room, PRISM international and the CBC. In February of 2024, Permission to Land was published by Caitlin Press. She was born and raised on the west coast, has European/Acadian ancestry on her father’s side, and European/WSANEC ancestry on her mother’s side. She was a founder of the Fat Oyster Reading Series in Fanny Bay and taught creative writing at North Island College for several years.