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Anita
Rau Badami
Anita was born in India in 1961. She grew up in a
household, where English was the primary language spoken,
and she attended Catholic schools. At age 18, she borrowed
money from her father to buy novels, and to pay him back.
She took her first writing assignment, an article in a
local newspaper, which earned her 75 rupees. She worked as
a copywriter for advertising agencies and she wrote
stories for children magazines. Anita married in 1984 and
she had a son in 1987. Anita moved to Calgary in 1991. In
1995, she graduated from the university of Calgary, with
MA degree in English. Anita Rau Badami submitted her first
work to Penguin books. Penguin published her work, and
soon she was touring North America, reading from her
best-selling debut novel "Tamarind Mem".
Audrey Thomas
Audrey was born and raised in Binghamton, NY. She
immigrated to BC in 1959, attended UBC and earned MA in
English. From 1964 to 1966, she lived in Ghana, where she
wrote her first published story, "If One Green
Bottle..." It won her the Atlantic First Award from
the Atlantic Monthly. Her first Novel "Mrs.
Blood", 1970, harkens back to her Ghanaian
experience. Her books have been translated in several
languages, and she has had 20 radio plays produced. She
has received the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award for an
outstanding literary career in BC. Audrey has lived in
Greece, France and UK, but since 1969, she has chiefly
raised on Galiano Island.
Charles Montgomery
Charles now lives in Vancouver, but his work as a
journalist has taken him to Mexico and Peru, Nunavut and
Europe, the Far East and the South Pacific. Whether
uncovering industrial scandals in the Peruvian desert or
exploring sled dog etiquette in the Arctic, his work has
won acclaim for its reportage and taut storytelling. His
tales are complemented by his own images or work from
photojournalist partners. Since 2001, Charles has won four
Western Magazine Awards, a 2004 silver National Magazine
Award, and a 2003 American Society of Travel Writer's
Lowell Thomas Silver Award. He is a recent winner of the
Charles Taylor Prize and a current BC Book Prize nominee.
Crawford Kilian
North Vancouver's own guru of creative writing was born in
New York City and grew up in Los Angeles and Mexico City.
He returned to NYC for college, did two years in the US
Army at Fort Ord, worked as apprentice tech writer in
Berkeley, moved to Canada with his wife in 1967, stumbled
into teaching and found that he loved it. He has been at
Capilano College since it opened in 1968, and ha has also
taught in China. Author of many books and articles, his
current projects include two novels and articles for
online journals.
Melanie Ray
Since 1984, Melanie has turned her actor's experience and
training to the art of storytelling. Her carefully crafted
programs are full of people you know, or wish you did, and
she sets them down in scenes as vivid as the characters
themselves. She has been heard in schools and theatres,
outdoors and in, on radio, television and CD, by children
and adults, across Canada and beyond, to parts of the
United States and England.
Nick Bantock
Nick was born in England. He went to school in the
soulless suburbs of North East London, and from there he
moved on to art college in the market town of Maidstone,
Kent. At the age of 23, he give up his job in a betting
shop and began working as a freelance illustrator. Over
the next 16 years, he produced approximately 300 book
covers, including novels by Philip Roth and John Updike.
During the winter of 1988, he moved to Vancouver with his
wife and young son. Two years later, he decided to try his
hand at creating pop-up books, and the legend
"Griffin and Sabine" was born.
Patrick Lane
Patrick has lived and traveled extensively around the
world, and has been published in many countries. He has
been Writer-in-Residence and teacher at a number of
educational institutions, including Concordia University
in Montreal and the University of Victoria and Toronto.
Lane lives on Vancouver Island with his wife, the poet
Lorna Crozier. In 2000, he confronted a choice: he could
continue drinking and expect to die, or he could quit and
live. He went into rehab and for a year, he stayed close
to home, gardening and slowly rediscovering himself by
searching among his memories for the root of his
addiction. "There is a Season" is his memoir of
this journey back.
Russell Thornton
Russell is a North Vancouver poet, who has lived in
Montreal, in Aberystwyth, Wales, and in Larissa and
Thessaloniki, Greece. He won the first prize in the League
of Canadian Poets National Contest in 2000 for the
"The Beginnings of Stars". His poems are
included in a number of anthologies of Canadian poetry,
and some of his poems have appeared in Greek translation.
His first conversation with Patrick Lane is included in
"Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in
Conversation", 2002.
Sharon Butala
Sharon was born Nipawin, Saskatchewan. She was educate in
small prairie towns and at the University of Saskatchewan.
She gave up work as a Special Educator to become a
novelist, short story writer, and writer of creative
non-fiction. Sharon has been called one of the Canada's
true visionaries. The recipient of a host of awards, in
2004 she was honored as an Officer of the Order of Canada,
for giving an important voice to rural women and touching
readers with her own spirituality and sense of place.
Sparkle Hayter
Sparkle was born in Pouce Coupe, BC and raised in
Edmonton, where she became a hockey fan and knew Mark
Messier, when he was shorter than she was. A graduate of
New York University, she has worked for CNN, WABC, and
Global Television. After CNN, she moved to Pakistan and
went into Afghanistan to cover the Afghan war. After one
particularly harrowing four-hour trek through a minefield
behind some Frenchmen and a flatulent packhorse, she
decided to give up full-time journalism. Upon her return
to New York City, she -in short order- get married, took
up stand-up comedy, sold her first novel, moved to Tokyo,
moved back to New York into the fabled Chelsea Hotel, got
a divorce, published more novels, and got a tattoo.
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