2011 Authors and Guests

		Christine Adjahi has her PhD in Geography; she is a teacher and documentary filmmaker, as well as a remarkable and passionate storyteller. She was born in Bénin and is part of the new generation of contemporary African women steeped in Western culture but who continue to promote African culture and cross-cultural sensibility. A long time militant for the revaluation of oral culture and the survival of African cultures, Christine was moved to write tales from the Bénin oral tradition. She is a founder of FICOP whose mission is to rehabilitate storytelling within the cultural fabric of Bénin.

		Tammy Armstrong’s award-winning writing has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, US, Europe, UK and Algeria. She has published two novels and four poetry collections. Her newest poetry collection is The Scare in the Crow from Goose Lane Editions. She currently lives in Fredericton New Brunswick.

		Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty works of fiction and poetry, critical essays and books for children, and has received top honours and awards in Canada, the United States and the U.K., and in many other countries. She lives in Toronto.

		Helaine Becker is an award-winning writer of books for children. She has written over 40 books, including the best-selling Looney Bay All-Stars series; popular non-fiction, including Magic Up Your Sleeve, Secret Agent Y.O.U. and Boredom Blasters; picture books and young adult novels. She also writes for children's magazines and for kids’ television. She recently wrote and developed Dr. Greeny's Mad Lab, a segment on Planet Echo, an environmental science show airing on APTN in 2011, and is hard at work on several other TV projects.

		His decision to end a 35-year career as a high school French teacher, in June 2005, enabled Reynald Cantin to pursue writing for young readers full time. Québec-Amérique recently published his trilogy for adolescents, Ève Paradis, as a one-volume collection. But younger readers are Cantin’s main focus. His newest characters are named Frissella, Piston, Rimette, Yo, and Justin, and their fates are played out in La joyeuse maison hantée, Le trio rigolo, and Mes parents sont gentils, mais…, now published as collections by FouLire.

		Karen Connelly is one of Canada’s best-known and most successful younger writers and is the author of nine books of best-selling non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. She has lived in Spain, France, Greece and Thailand. Her observations about social and economic change in Thailand and her relationships with people in Burma and on the Thai-Burmese border marked the beginning of a new, more serious stage of education. The Lizard Cage, her first novel, illuminates the tragic story of modern Burma and is a deeply layered work about the transforming power of language and of love. Burmese Lessons, a love story, her most recent book, is a memoir of her time in Burma and in the precarious, dangerous world inhabited by Burmese people on the Thai-Burma border; it also tells the story of her passionate relationship with a Burmese dissident leader.

		Born in Québec City, Hélène Dorion has published over twenty books of poetry, stories and essays. Her work has been widely translated and published in fifteen countries, and has garnered a number of honours and prestigious literary awards in Québec and beyond, including Université de Montréal’s French Studies Award for the narrative L’Étreinte des vents (2009), the Charles-Vildrac Award for her poetry collection Le Hublot des heures (2008), both the Prix Mallarmé and the Governor General of Canada’s Award for poetry, for Ravir : les lieux (2005), and the Prix Anne-Hébert for the narrative Jours de sable (2002).

		Daniel Dugas is a poet, a videographer and a musician. He has created about forty video poems since the mid-80s. His sixth poetry collection Hé! suivi de Icônes was published last spring by Éditions Prise de Parole.

		Charlie Foran is the author of ten books, including four novels and the recent biographies Mordecai: The Life and Times (for which he won the Charles Taylor Award for Non-Fiction) and Maurice Richard. He lives and works in Peterborough, Ontario.

		Born in Prince Edward Island, Melvin Gallant is retired from a thirty-year career teaching literature at the Université de Moncton. He has published over twenty books, including a dozen books for children. Active on the cultural scene, he also founded a number of organizations and periodicals.

		Mylène Gilbert-Dumas was born in Sherbrooke. Following extensive studies at Université Laval, she taught French in an English school in Québec City. She returned to Sherbrooke in 2005, and now divides her time between travels and writing. She is the author of ten novels, including two for adolescents.

		A graduate in arts and graphic design, Annie Groovie was an advertising designer before launching a career as a creator of books for children in 2002. She has written over 42 books so far, and her Petit Léon has reached a television audience as an animated character.

		In his teens, Doug Harris worked summers unloading watermelon trucks from Florida and at an animal hospital, where he learned to properly dispose of dead bodies. Then, in his twenties, Harris got through film school by working night shifts as a hospital orderly — once again wrapping and transporting dead bodies. Though it was hard to leave the cadavers behind, at 24 Doug co-wrote and directed the feature film Remembering Mel, which became a cult classic. Today he runs an award-winning video production company, Hot Spots Productions, in Montreal.

		Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of 19 Knives, My White Planet, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. His novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fictionHe has published recently in Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Hobart, The Barcelona Review, Vrij Nederland, and reviews for The Globe & Mail. He is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and now teaches at the University of New Brunswick, where he is fiction editor of The Fiddlehead.

		Susan Juby’s novels have been published all over the world. She is the author of the bestselling Alice MacLeod trilogy, which was adapted into a television series called Alice, I Think. Her latest novel is The Woefield Poultry Collective. Susan lives in Nanaimo, B.C. and teaches creative writing at Vancouver Island University.

		Martine Latulippe has written over thirty novels for young readers, including the popular Lorian Loubier, Julie, Mouk and Marie-P series. These days, Martine’s time is devoted to writing and writers conferences, and to Alibis, as its literary editor… and of course to mothering her daughters Mélina and Chloé!

		Emerise LeBlanc-Nowlan was born in Bouctouche, NB and has been a nurse for 30 years. She is an artist, and has both written and illustrated three books for children, and was a participant in several book fairs notably in Montreal and Ottawa. Emerise has received the iParenting Media Award and the Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell Award.

		Dyane Léger’s first collection of poetry, Graines de fées, inaugurated Éditions Perce-Neige in 1980. In the Maritimes and in Louisiana, by way of Europe, Dyane Léger draws from daily life an inspiration that sparks the birth of magic. Her most recent publication is L’incendiaire, (Dyane Léger and Paul Savoie) Éditions du Marais (2008).

		A novelist, short-story writer and playwright, Gilles Leroy has more than a dozen works in his name. Alabama Song, which focuses on the character of Zelda Fitzgerald, won the 2007 Prix Goncourt. In 2010, Leroy published Zola Jackson, which recounts the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of the titular heroine.

		Shandi Mitchell’s debut novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, has sold in eleven countries, including in Hebrew, Italian, Dutch and Chinese translations, and was awarded the 2010 Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, the regional Commonwealth Prize, and long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

		Before immigrating to Canada, Fereshteh Molavi published several novels in Tehran. A former Persian bibliographer at Sterling Library, Yale University, she has published numerous stories and essays internationally. She appeared in various anthologies, including Speaking in Tongues and TOK. Her dialogue with Karen Connelly, Listen to the Reed, was published by PEN Canada. Her recently-published books include The Departures of Season and Of Mutts & Men, in Tehran, as well as Those Years, These Essays, in Paris.

		Kenneth Oppel is the author of the Silverwing series, which has sold over a million copies worldwide, and Airborn, which won the Governor General’s Award in 2004. His most recent novel is Half Brother. He lives in Toronto with his family.

		Born in Ottawa, B.W. Powe is a poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and professor. He studied with Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan at the University of Toronto. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Frye and McLuhan’s chemistry, on their crossings in history and on their importance as Canadian visionaries and thinkers. B.W. Powe teaches at York University, and his poetry and novels have won him numerous awards.

		A dedicated international activist, Jean-Christophe Rufin has led a number of large humanitarian organizations. Until last summer he was France’s Ambassador to Senegal. His varied experience has inspired a rich body of work comprising essays (Le Piège humanitaire, Un léopard sur le garrot) and novels (L'Abyssin, Rouge Brésil (Goncourt 2001), Le Parfum d'Adam). In 2008, he was elected to the Académie française.

		Johanna Skibsrud is the author of two books of poetry, Late Nights with Wild Cowboys, which was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Award, and I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being. Her debut novel, The Sentimentalists, was awarded the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives in Montreal.

		Born in Sourisia (Mouse Island), Geronimo Stilton has a Ph. D. in mouse literature rodentology and comparative archeomousic philosophy. For over 20 years, he has been the publisher of L'Écho du rongeur, Sourisia’s most widely-read daily. He is also the author of such real best-sellers as Le Sourire de Mona Sourisa and was awarded the Souritzer Prize for his exciting scoop, Le Mystère du trésor disparu. In his spare time, Stilton collects parmesan rinds dating back to the 17th century and plays golf; he also loves telling stories to Benjamin, his favourite nephew.

		For eighteen years, Sylvia Tyson was one half of the internationally renowned folk duo Ian and Sylvia. Their hits included “Four Strong Winds,” written by Ian, and (for the group We Five) “You Were on My Mind,” written by Sylvia. Sylvia has recorded ten solo albums since the duo split in 1975, and since 2000 has been recording and performing with the group Quartette. Sylvia Tyson is a member of the Order of Canada and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and her first novel Joyner’s Dream has just been published. She lives in Toronto.

		Following studies in French literature in Québec and in France, Hélène Vachon was hired by Québec’s Department of Culture and Communication, in 1979. Since 1995, she has published about twenty books for young readers, several translations and three novels for adults, many award-winners among them.

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2011 Authors and Guests