Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to all those who supported us throughout our writing journey. A project such as this takes years to put together, and while we have been thinking about it for a long time, we have been actively writing these entries since 2023.

Firstly, as authors, we extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this project, whether visibly or behind the scenes, and who trusted us with the information they shared with us as we prepared their profiles. As we researched the contributions of the authors featured in this book, we talked with some of them in person, via phone or text message, and occasionally via emails. We are sincerely grateful to the authors whose work we are honoured to feature in this volume. We would also like to acknowledge here that Govind Singh Rawat let us use his library, and Anamolmani, Khem Guragain, and Bhanu Dhungana assisted us in reaching out to some authors. We have tried our best to ensure that the information presented here is as accurate as possible. We will continue to update the book. Any unintentional errors or omissions will be addressed with the next edition.

We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to the Canada Research Chair (CRC) Program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for the funding support (Funding Reference Number: CRC-2019-0030). We owe a great deal to Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), where this project was developed and nurtured. We especially thank Shelley Boyd, Cathy Parlee, and Diane Purvey, and the Office of Research Services, for their enthusiasm, encouragement, and support.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the team at the KPU Library, especially Karen Meijer and Amanda Grey, for their help with preparing the technical aspects of generating a pressbook. We also thank Joanne Muzak for her editorial assistance. Contributions of all these colleagues have been invaluable to us.

To our families: Thanks for being there for us when we needed you and for your optimism as we sometimes stumbled through various phases of the project.

To our readers: We hope these entries inspire you to learn more about the writers featured here and to further explore the diversity of voices in Canadian and global literatures.

With gratitude Asma Sayed and Pushpa Raj Acharya