Ruth Elwood Martin: I worked as family physician in Vancouver from 1983 to 2009; I also worked part-time in the medical clinics of bc correctional centres for men and women for seventeen years. I am a Clinical Professor of the School of Population and Public Health, University British Columbia, and an Associate Faculty of the Department of Family Practice. My experiences as a prison physician participatory researcher during the time period of Arresting Hope changed me, such that my goal became to foster the improvement of prison health and to engage patients’ voices in the process. I helped create the Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education, which is a group committed to encouraging and facilitating collaborative opportunities for health, education, research, service and advocacy, to enhance the social well-being and (re)integration of individuals in custody, their families and communities. I also lead the Prison Health Special Interest Focused Practice Group, of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Mo Korchinski: Since writing Arresting Hope, I have found my three children through Facebook and have a loving relationship with my children today. I am a proud grandmother to a beautiful four-year-old granddaughter, Letisha, who has taught me what unconditional love is. I live independently and am graduated in May 2012 from the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology with my degree in Associate of Arts. I started my Bachelor in Social Work in September 2012. I volunteer as a community-based researcher with Women in2 Healing and work as a research assistant with the Canadian Institute of Health Research funded project “Doing Time Unlocking the Gates” at the University of British Columbia. I am clean and sober and spend most of my spare time helping others in my community. I feel that the key to turning one’s life around and keeping it moving in the right direction is to help others turn their lives around. I co-directed the documentaries Revolving Door and Unlocking the Gates, which are about women’s release from prison, and when the prison gate is unlocked, but the doors to society are kept locked. My passion is to take my experience of addiction and the justice system and show people that changes are needed: to get the voices of women who are still inside of prison heard; and, to get policy-makers to understand that change is needed in the prison system and in the communities.

Lynn Fels: Working on this book project and with those involved in the research project in accw has been an unexpected gift for me. I am humbled and awed by the strength, wisdom, and commitment that the women I have met bring to our conversations and shared experiences. I came to understand that the stories we live, dwell in our bodies. We are marked by our beginnings and by those we meet on our life journey, but we may take action to change our narrative. I am a writer and Associate Professor in Arts Education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and a former editor of the on-line education journal, Educational Insights. I am passionate about the arts as exploratory spaces for learning. I am currently involved in a five-year research project on arts for social change in Canada. My books include, Living Together: Unmarried Couples in Canada, and, co-authored with George Belliveau, Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama and Learning.

Carl Leggo: I am a poet and professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. I think we can live more joyful lives if we commit ourselves to writing about our lived experiences and sharing our stories, poetry, and wisdom with others. So, it is a joy to work with others to encourage them to write and to reveal their voices with heart and truthfulness. I have published several books of poetry and scholarship, always with a focus on creativity and the arts, including: Growing Up Perpendicular on the Side of a Hill; View from My Mother’s House; Come-By-Chance; Teaching to Wonder: Responding to Poetry in the Secondary Classroom; Lifewriting as Literary Métissage and an Ethos for Our Times (co-authored with Erika Hasebe-Ludt and Cynthia Chambers); Being with A/r/tography (co-edited with Stephanie Springgay, Rita L. Irwin, and Peter Gouzouasis); Creative Expression, Creative Education (co-edited with Robert Kelly); and Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences (co-edited with Monica Prendergast and Pauline Sameshima).