Workshop Presenters
Below is a list of speakers and a brief biography. Download a reading list of current and recent books published by presenters.
ANGIE ABDOU
Angie Abdou is a fiction writer and teacher who has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Calgary. BC BookWorld called her short story collection, Anything Boys Can Do (2006), an "extraordinary literary debut" and the Victoria Times Colonist commended its original take on female sexuality.
The Globe and Mail praised her first novel, The Bone Cage (2007), for its "beautiful writing" and The Quill & Quire called it "vivid, intense, and authentic." The Kootenay Library Federation chose The Bone Cage as the official book for the inaugural "One Book One Kootenay" reading series and it was a finalist in CBC's 2011 Canada Reads. The Canterbury Trail, a black comedy about mountain culture, was just released from Victoria's Brindle & Glass Press. Angie was raised in Moose Jaw, SK and now lives in Fernie, BC with her husband and two children. She teaches at the College of the Rockies in Cranbrook
WILLIAM DEVERELL
William Deverell was a journalist for seven years with the Canadian Press in Montreal and the Vancouver Sun.. As a lawyer, he was counsel in more than a thousand criminal cases, including thirty murder trials, either as defender or prosecutor. His novels include High Crimes, Mecca, The Dance of Shiva, Platinum Blues, Mindfield, Kill All the Lawyers, Street Legal, Trial of Passion, Slander, The Laughing Falcon, Mind Games, April Fool, Kill All the Judges and Snow Job. His novels have been translated into fourteen languages and sold worldwide.
Trial of Passion launched his first crime series, featuring the classically trained, self-doubting Arthur Beauchamp, a legend of the criminal bar. The book won the 1997 Arthur Ellis prize for best Canadian crime novel, and the Dashiell Hammett award for literary excellence in crime writing in North America. The Arthur Beauchamp series continued with April Fool, also an Ellis winner, Kill All the Judges, and Snow Job. Each of his other works have been short listed for the Ellis award since its inception. Kill All the Judges also was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Humour Medal.
He wrote the screenplay Shellgame for CBC-TV drama, which served as the pilot for CBC's long-running series Street Legal, and he is the creator of that series, which has run internationally in more than 80 countries. He has been guest of honour at Canada's main crime venue, Bloody Words, and received the Best Canadian Crime Writer award at the Scene of the Crime Festival in Ontario. He lives on Pender Island, British Columbia, and in Costa Rica.
DEANNA BARNHARDT-KAWATSKI
Deanna Barnhardt Kawatski is the author of best-selling Wilderness Mother and Clara and Me, a B.C. Book Prize nominee. Both titles were Book-of-the-Month Club selections. Fiddlehead Press published a volume of her poetry. More recently her novel, Stalking the Wild Heart was released. Deanna has travelled broadly and led the life of a pioneering mother in the B.C. wilderness. Her feature articles have appeared in Harrowsmith, Country Journal, Mother Earth News, and others. Some stories have been anthologized. Deanna's life has been the subject of two CBC television documentaries. She has given many readings and writing workshops.
THERESA KISHKAN
From poetry collections to novels to literary non-fiction, Theresa Kishkan's ten books explore the relationship between memory andhistory, the natural world and its influence on human communities. Reviewers have praised her work for its lyricism and celebration of the quotidian details of her life. Her latest novel, The Age of Water Lilies, moves between Walhachin before the Great War and Victoria in the 1960s, as an unlikely friendship blossoms between an elderly woman still mourning the loss of her lover in the trenches of France and a child making a map of her neighbourhood. Theresa's collection of personal essays, Phantom Limb, was given the Readers' Choice Award by the Canadian Creative Non-Fiction Collective in 2009 and was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction. Her memoir, Mnemonic: A Book of Trees, will appear in the fall of 2011. Sections of it have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a National Magazine Award, and one essay won the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Prize.
EVELYN LAU
Evelyn Lau is the author of four volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid was a Canadian best seller and You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award; Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General's Award. Her work has appeared in over a hundred literary magazines, garnering four Western Magazine Awards and a National Magazine Award. She has read from and discussed her work at literary festivals and universities around the world. Her most recent work of poetry, Living Under Plastic, is published by Oolichan Books.
GRANT LAWRENCE
Grant has long been a leading voice in Canadian arts and entertainment.
He can be heard throughout the week on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West, On The Coast, and has been a frequent past contributor to Q and Sounds Like Canada. Lawrence hosts the top-rated CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, a weekly showcase of Canadian independent music. Grant also hosts Grant Lawrence Live, a live daily program on CBC Radio 3's web radio station, also on Sirius 152.Grant recently published his first book, Adventures in Solitude, a memoir of his experiences spending his summers growing up in the coastal wilderness of Desolation Sound, BC, which went to #1 on the BC Bestsellers List, #2 on the National Bestsellers List, and won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year.
ANNABEL LYON
Annabel Lyon is a New Westminster fiction writer and teacher.
Her previous books are Oxygen (stories), The Best Thing for You (novellas), and The Golden Mean (novel). Encore Edie is a sequel to my first novel for young people, All-Season Edie.
JOHN PASS
John Pass is the author of sixteen books and chapbooks including The Hour's Acropolis (Harbour Publishing, 1991), Radical Innocence (Harbour Publishing 1994), Water Stair (Oolichan Books, 2000) and Stumbling In The Bloom (Oolichan Books 2005). The Hour's Acropolis and Water Stair were short-listed for The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes). Water Stair was also a finalist for the Governor General's Award. Stumbling In The Bloom won the Governor General's Award in 2006.
A new collection, crawlspace, will appear from Harbour in May 2011.
With his wife, writer Theresa Kishkan, John runs High Ground Press, specializing in the letterpress printing and publication of poetry broadsheets.
WENDY PHILLIPS
Wendy began her first novel at the age of 11, climbing the hills behind her hometown of Kamloops, B.C. to scribble in notebooks. Her love for words has led her into jobs as a journalist, a bookbinder, an English teacher and a high-school teacher-librarian. She holds degrees in Journalism, English, Education and Children's Literature. She has lived in Ottawa, in Lesotho, Southern Africa and in Australia. She and her husband currently live in Richmond, B.C. with their two children. Fishtailing is her first book.
MICHAEL SLADE
Michael Slade is a criminal lawyer (100+ murder cases) and the author of 14 dark mystery thrillers, from HEADHUNTER (1984) to RED SNOW (2010). He'll be Guest of Honour at Bloody Words, Canada's crime writing convention, in Victoria in 2011, and was Guest of Honour at the World Horror Convention in Seattle in 2001. He teaches "How To Write a Mystery Thriller" at SFU. His novels fuse the genres of police and legal procedure, whodunit, impossible crime,
history, suspense, and horror. To see where Slade gets his plot ideas visit the MORGUE at www.specialx.net.
NANCY WARREN
Nancy Warren is the USA Today Bestselling author of more than forty romance novels and novellas for Harlequin and Kensington publishers. Nancy has won many awards for her writing, including Romantic Times Magazine's Reviewer's Choice Award, for which she is a finalist again this year. In 2004 she was a double RITA award finalist from Romance Writers of America. Nancy holds an honors degree in English literature and worked in journalism and public relations before selling her first novel in 2000. She was the launch author for Harlequin's officially licensed NASCAR series of romances. Speed Dating included a cameo appearance by NASCAR superstar Carl Edwards. She has been featured in the New York Times, Canadian Living Magazine and Homemakers to name a few. Nancy regularly teaches writing workshops on various aspects of women's fiction. For more please visit www.nancywarren.net
