Coming in 2010
Mark your calendars now for Saturday, August 14th, 2010, when our guests will be Michael Blair, Vicki Delany, Susanna Kearsley, James W. Nichol, and Grant Allen
Award honoree Gail Bowen.
Joining the 2010 Festival:
Michael Blair — Michael Blair's first story, a murder mystery called What I Did On My Summer Vacation, was accepted for
publication in his high school year book, but the "editor" lost the manuscript. Taking this as a sign, he set his sights on becoming a commercial artist. After
seeing how commercial artists were abused in the advertising department of a major retail store chain, he lost his mind and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Following his discharge two weeks later (they felt that democracy was safer without his protection), he started work on his vast collection of rejection slips.
To support his writing habit, he's worked as a truck driver, quality control clerk in a rubber gasket factory, merchandising and advertising consultant, deli-counter
person, graphic and display designer, carpenter, second hand bookstore proprietor, copy writer, art re-viewer, computer administrator, and between 1984 and 1994
a corporate wage slave. Since 1994 he's worked, when necessary, as a freelance technical writer/editor. He lives in Montreal with Pamela Hilliard, a graphic
artist.
Blair has published five mystery novels to date. His first, If Looks Could Kill (McClelland & Stewart, 2001) was a finalist in the 1999 Chapters/Robertson
Davies Literary Prize, and short-listed for the Quebec Writers' Federation 2001 First Book Prize. About The Dells (Dundurn Press, 2007), one reviewer
wrote that Blair's writing style was reminiscent of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird. To keep things in perspective, If Looks Could Kill
reminded another re-viewer of an episode of The Beachcombers.
Visit Michael Blair's website: www.michaelblair.ca
Gail Bowen — Gail Bowen's series features Joanne Kilbourn, a university professor, sometime political columnist, and a wife, mother and
grandmother. McClelland Stewart published The Brutal Heart, the 11th book in the series, in August 2008.
The first six books in the Kilbourn series — Deadly Appearances (1990); Murder at the Mendel (1991); The Wandering Soul Murders
(1992); A Colder Kind of Death (1994), winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award; A Killing Spring (1996) and Verdict in
Blood (1998) — have appeared as made-for-television movies with world-wide distribution. Burying Ariel (2000); The Glass Coffin (2002);
The Last Good Day (2004) and The Endless Knot (2006) have met with critical and commercial success. In June 2008, Reader's Digest named Bowen 'Canada's
Best Mystery Novelist'.
Bowen's short story "The King of Charles Street West", which appeared in Toronto Noir (2008) published by Akashic Books, New York, was singled out for
special praise by Publishers' Weekly.
Visit Bowen's website: www.gailbowen.com
Vicki Delany — Vicki Delany's 2009 novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, "she
uses... artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair." Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory, Scare
the Light Away) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the
Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki Delany is settling down to the rural life in bucolic,
Prince Edward County, Ontario where she rarely wears a watch. Vicki's newest book is Gold Fever, the second in the Klondike Gold Rush series from
Rendezvous Crime.
Visit Delany's website: www.vickidelany.com.
Susanna Kearsley — Susanna Kearsley was working as a museum curator when she wrote her first book on a dare from her sister and realized
that writing was all that she wanted to do. She left the museum and worked as a waitress instead while she wrote her second novel, Mariana, which went
on to win the UK's Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize in 1993. Since then, her books have been translated into several languages, selected for the Mystery Guild,
condensed for Reader's Digest, and optioned for film. In 2006 she created a thriller-writing alter-ego, Emma Cole, for her eighth book, Every Secret Thing,
which was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. Her latest book, The Winter Sea, was a finalist for both a
RITA award and the UK's Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Writing under both names, she balances her daily work schedule with being a stay-at-home mother of two.
Visit Kearsley's website: www.susannakearsley.com.
James W. Nichol — For most of James W. Nichol's forty year writing career he's been a dramatist, having written numerous plays for
theatre, radio, television and film.
In 2002 he started a new career as a novelist, publishing his first book Midnight Cab, based on his popular CBC Radio mystery series of the same name.
It went on to be published in nine other countries besides Canada selling over half a million copies world wide. It won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First
Novel and was short-listed for the Gold Dagger Award in the U.K.
His second novel Transgression, a love story with a mystery entwined and set in WWII, was short-listed for the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award for 2008,
and to date has been published in Germany and the United States as well as Canada.
His third book, Death Spiral, has recently been short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. Released in September 2009 and set in the author's home town of Paris, Ontario, of 1947, the novel is about a Spitfire fighter
pilot who returns home from the war to find himself caught up in a series of murders that in some inexplicable way point back to Germany and the day he was shot
down.
Nichol lives with his wife Judi in Stratford, Ontario.
Guest Lecturer
Once again, the lecture will be given by Rob Tripp, reporter with the Kingston-Whig Standard
Visit Tripp's CanCrime website: www.cancrime.com.
Optional Workshop
"Whose story is this anyway? The powers and pitfalls of point of view. Explore the power of point of view to enhance character, add tension and create crisp,
vivid scenes."
The workshop will be lead by Barbara Fradkin, author of numerous short stories and novels who has won back-to-back Arthur Ellis Best Novel
Awards for her Inspector Green mysteries.
Visit Fradkin's website: www.barbarafradkin.com.
|
