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.
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.
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 Vicki at www.vickidelany.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 novel Death Spiral was released in September 2009. Set in the author's home
town of Paris, Ontario in 1947, it's 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.
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