The 2011 (2nd Annual) Galiano Literary Festival

Gurjinder Basran‘s debut novel, Everything Was Good-bye, was the winner of the Search for the Great BC Novel Contest in 2010. Her work has been shortlisted for Amazon.com’s Breakthrough Novel Award and earned her a place in The Vancouver Sun’s annual speculative arts and culture article “One’s to Watch.” Gurjinder lives in Delta, BC with her family.

Dennis E. Bolen is a novelist, editor, teacher and journalist, seventh book of fiction, Anticipated Results, will be published by Arsenal/Pulp Press in April, 2011.

Don Calame is the author of the White Pine Award nominated young adult novel Swim the Fly as well as the ALA Best Fiction For Young Adults nominated Beat the Band. Don is also an accomplished screenwriter who has worked with Marvel Studios, the Disney Channel, Lionsgate, Universal Studios, and Paramount Pictures. He lives with his wife and two dogs in British Columbia.

Larry Campbell Born and raised in Brantford, Ontario, Campbell became a steelworker in Hamilton in the 1960s. In his first career move, he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was transferred to Vancouver in 1969, later joining the RCMP drug squad in 1973. With more than twelve years experience with the RCMP, Campbell transitioned into death investigation, establishing Vancouver’s first District Coroner’s Office in 1981 and becoming the Chief Coroner for British Columbia in 1996. In this capacity, he became the inspiration behind the popular CBC drama Da Vinci’s Inquest, as well as its spin-off, Da Vinci’s City Hall. Larry Campbell was intimately involved with the television programs, writing and collaborating on scripts for the series. In August 2005, Campbell was summoned to the Senate of Canada by Prime Minister Paul Martin. As a Senator, Campbell has continued his work on drug policy, mental health, and aboriginal issues. In 2009, he co-authored the book “A Thousand Dreams Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the Fight for Its Future”.

Michael Christie is the author of “The Beggar’s Garden”, a collection of linked stories published by HarperCollins Canada. He has been nominated for the Journey Prize and is a senior writer for Color Magazine, a skateboard magazine based in Vancouver. He splits his time between Galiano Island and Thunder Bay, and is currently at work on a novel.

Joan Coldwell A former professor of English and Women’s Studies, Joan Coldwell is the founder and publisher of Hedgerow Press, which specializes in the production of high quality, illustrated, paperback books (www.hedgerowpress.com). She is co-author, with Pat Martin Bates, of the recently released “It is I, Patricia; an artist’s childhood” and editor of “Apples under the Bed: recollections and recipes from B.C. Writers and Artists.” Hedgerow Press is proud to be the publisher of Jane Rule’s final book “Loving the Difficult,” winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award.

Ivan E. Coyote was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. An award-winning author of six collections of short stories, one novel, three CD’s, four short films and a renowned performer, Ivan’s first love is live storytelling, and over the last seventeen years she has become an audience favourite at music, poetry, spoken word and writer’s festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam. The Globe and Mail called Ivan “a natural-born storyteller” and Ottawa X Press said “Coyote is to CanLit what k.d. lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture.” Toronto Star praises Coyote’s “talent for sketching the bizarre in the everyday”, and Quill’s Magazine says Ivan has a “distinctive and persuasive voice, a flawless sense of pacing, and an impeccable sense of story.” Ivan’s column, Loose End has appeared monthly in Xtra West magazine since 2001. Her first novel, Bow Grip, was awarded the Relit award for best fiction and named by the American Library Association as a Stonewall honor book in literature, and is in development to be made into a feature length film. Ivan’s new collection of short stories, Missed Her, was released in September, 2010.

Mona Fertig, born in Vancouver, is a poet, publisher, and book artist. She was theounder and Director of Canada’s first literary centre, the Literary Storefront, in Vancouver’s Gastown, which operated from 1978–1982. A founding member of the Federation of BC Writers, the BC Book Prizes and the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets she has been the BC/Yukon Rep of The Writers’ Union of Canada, and the BC Rep of PEN Canada. Fertig has also been a bookseller, literary events and political organizer. She is member of The Alcuin Society, Writers West, LPG and ABPBC and the co-owner/operator, with her husband, of Mother Tongue Publishing on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Two new books of hers were published this year. The Life And Art of George Fertig, #3 in The Unheralded Artists of BC series and The Unsettled, first book of new poetry in 12 years.

Cathy Ford Born on the prairies Saskatchewan, grew in northern British Columbia, graduated BFA, MFA from UBC, with honours, in Creative Writing. Cathy Ford has published more than ten and less than twenty books of poetry, long poems, and book length poems, with blewointment press, Intermedia Press, Caitlin Press, Vehicule Press, Harbour Publishing, gynergy books, and erosisarose press. Published poetry, long poems, short fiction, memoir, essays, in chapbooks, folios, and literary magazines across Canada. Also edited fiction collections, and books of essays, including feminist theory and language based poetics. Worked for many years in community action groups to address local issues, globally promoting the achievement of world peace, and raising community and national consciousness to stop violence against women and children. Presently active in arts politics, to improve the status of Canadian writers, and to assert copyright and enhance rights revenues for Canadian creators. New book of poetry: “the art of breathing underwater” published with Mother Tongue Publishing, first full-length book of poetry in over twenty years.

Kim Goldberg is a poet, journalist and the author of six books. Her latest book is RED ZONE, a poem diary of homelessness in Nanaimo, BC, where she lives. The book has been taught as a literature course text at Vancouver Island University, and critics have compared the writing to Allen Ginsberg, John Steinbeck, Marge Piercy and George Stanley. Her other books of poetry and nonfiction include the popular Where to See Wildlife on Vancouver Island and Ride Backwards on Dragon, a series of linked poems based on the 66 movements of the ancient martial art of Liuhebafa, which Kim has been studying since 1997. Ride Backwards on Dragon was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Kim has received the Goodwin’s Award for Excellence in Alternative Journalism, the Rannu Fund Poetry Prize for Speculative Literature, and other awards. Her poetry and prose have appeared in magazines and anthologies around the world. She holds a degree in biology, is an avid birdwatcher, and has written extensively on environmental issues including the 1990 car-bombing of redwoods activist Judi Bari.

Dr. Shelley Gruendler is a typographer, designer, and educator who teaches, lectures, and publishes internationally on typography and design. She holds a PhD and an MA in The History and Theory of Typography and Graphic Communication from the University of Reading, England and a Bachelor of Environmental Design in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University, USA. Shelley is a frequent speaker at typography conferences, is proud to live in the Canadian Typographic Archipelago, and, maybe someday, she’ll get around to publishing her biography of Beatrice Warde, the woman who championed accessible typographic theory. Shelley is the founding director of www.typecamp.org.

Des Kennedy is an accomplished novelist and satirist as well as a celebrated gardening writer and speaker. The author of eight books, in both fiction and non-fiction, he has been three times nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor. He has been listed as one of the most influential personalities in the Canadian gardening scene, and has appeared on a variety of regional and national television and radio programs. He’s a celebrated speaker, having performed at numerous conferences, schools, festivals, botanical gardens, art galleries, garden shows and wilderness gatherings in Canada and the U.S. He has hosted tours of the gardens of Ireland, New Zealand, China and England. As well, he’s been active for many years in environmental and social justice issues, including co-organizing the civil disobedience campaign in Strathcona Provincial Park in 1988 and getting arrested at Clayoquot Sound in 1993. He worked for several years in the 70s and early 80s as a land claim consultant for two Indian bands in north-central B.C. and was a founding director of a community land trust on Denman Island.

D.E. (Dawne) Knobbe is an author, editor, freelance writer and part time adventurer. She grew up in Vancouver but spent as much time as possible in the Gulf Islands, Cariboo-Chilcotin, Yukon, and Alaska. She has a degree in Creative Writing from U. Vic. and an M.A. in Professional Writing from MIU. Runaway Storm, her first Y. A. novel, recently won Gold and Silver medals at the 2010 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Runaway Storm is serendipitously set largely on Galiano and around the Gulf Islands. She has also written for the L.A. Times, Fairfield Source, Kite Tales, and many other periodicals. An active Board Member for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators-Los Angeles (SCBWI-LA). She leads many other children’s authors on adventurous writing field trips and inspires students and teachers in her Creative Writing Fun-Shops. If not off adventuring around the globe with hubby John and children Alexandra and James, she now hangs her hat in Huntington Beach, California.

Billie Livingston is the author of two novels, “Going Down Swinging” and “Cease to Blush” as well as a poetry collection, “The Chick at the Back of the
Church.” Her fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, including The Walrus, Toronto Life, The Journey Prize Stories, and “This” Magazine. Livingston’s story collection, “Greedy Little Eyes”, was cited by “The Globe and Mail” as one of the best books published in 2010 and her young adult novella, “The Trouble with Marlene”, has just been optioned for a feature film.

Annabel Lyon‘s story collection, Oxygen, and book of novellas, The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. The Golden Mean, her first novel, is a Canadian best seller and is being published in six languages. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Lyon lives in British Columbia with her husband and two children.

Anne Sorbie is the author of the novel, Memoir of a Good Death (Thistledown Press, October 2010) “…Sorbie’s dead and eloquent narrator is full of wild humour, pain, rebellion, compassion, wisdom. And she tells a wickedly good story.” –Robert Kroetsch. Memoir of a Good Death is available at local bookstores everywhere, and online at Amazon, Borders, and ThistledownPress.com. She was born in Paisley, Scotland and she lives and writes in Calgary. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Geist, and Other Voices, and in the 2009 anthology, Home and Away.

Timothy Taylor published his first novel Stanley Park in 2001. It was an immediate bestseller and a critical success. Taylor has since published a prize-winning collection of short fiction, Silent Cruise, and a second bestselling and critically acclaimed novel, Story House. His third novel, The Blue Light Project will be published in March 2011. Taylor is the winner of the Journey Prize, and has been finalist or runner-up for six other major national fiction prizes in Canada, including the prestigious Giller Prize. His work has also been chosen as the ‘One Book One City’ selection for Vancouver and named a finalist for Canada Reads. Taylor has also been widely published and recognized for his non-fiction magazine and newspaper work and has been winner or finalist a dozen separate magazine awards, including three gold medals in 2010 at the National and Western Magazine Awards. He is a columnist with the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine, as well as a contributing editor at EnRoute Magazine and Vancouver Magazine. He has also written for Institutional Investor, The Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Western Living, The Vancouver Review, Toro Magazine, Saturday Night, Adbusters, the National Post, the Vancouver Sun and many other publications.

Audrey Thomas Born in Binghamton, New York she immigrated to Canada in 1959, where she attended and later taught at the University of British Columbia. From 1964 to 1966 she lived in Ghana, an experience which has had a deep impact on her work. In 1987 she won the Marian Engel Awardfor her body of work. She has three times received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, for Intertidal Life (1984), Wild Blue Yonder (1990), and Coming Down from Wa (1995). In 2008, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Meg Tilly is the author of two adult novels, Singing Songs (Penguin/Dutton, A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, 1994) and Gemma (St. Martin’s Press.) Her first YA novel, Porcupine was released by Tundra/McClelland & Stewart in Sept 2007, and was shortlisted for a BC Book Prize, The Canadian Libraries Association Best Children’s Book 2008 and Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award 2008 It also was an Ontario Library Top Ten Best Bets 2008. First Time, a reluctant reader, was released by Orca in Nov 2008. Tilly is also known for her work in her former career as a film actress. Some of her better known films include, The Big Chill and Agnes of God, for which she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. At present she is working on an untitled adult novel, as well as another YA novel for Tundra/McClelland & Stewart. She lives on the Gulf Islands in Canada with her family.

Rhea Tregebov’s novel, The Knife Sharpeners Bell, has been called an assured and affecting first novel (Globe & Mail), a riveting debut (Winnipeg Free Press) and a sharply conceived, beautifully written story about the forces of history, the passion of ideology and the inescapable tug
of memory (Winnipeg Jewish Review). It was named a Top 100 Book of 2010 by the Globe and Mail, and has been awarded the 2010 J.I. Segal award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme. The novel was also shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, Fiction Category, 2009. Coteau Books was nominated for the Award for Publishing for the novel in the Saskatchewan Book Awards, 2009. The Knife Sharpeners Bell explores the fate of a Jewish family who moves from the Prairies to the USSR in the mid-1930s and is based in part on family history.

Alan Twigg is the author of fifteen books on a wide range of subjects, and a fifth-generation Vancouverite who has produced the cultural newspaper B.C. BookWorld since 1987. In 2007 he became the second recipient of the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University “to recognize and support leaders in the humanities who are not necessarily part of the academy.” In the same year he was also the first Writer in Residence at the George Price Centre for Peace in Belize.

John Vaillant is a freelance magazine writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus, among others. Of particular interest to Vaillant are stories that explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world.
His work in this and other fields has taken him to five continents and five oceans.

Ian Weir is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. Daniel O’Thunder, published in 2009, was a finalist for four awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. Among his extensive television credits, he was writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed CBC gangland miniseries Dragon Boys. His stage plays have been produced across Canada, as well as in the U.S. and England, and he is the author of ten radio dramas. He has won two Geminis, four Leos, a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award and a Jessie. Ian is currently working on a second novel, scheduled for publication by Douglas & McIntyre in 2012. He lives in Langley, B.C., with his wife Jude and their daughter Amy.

Robert J. Wiersema is the author of Before I Wake, a national bestseller and later published in 12 countries, The World More Full of Weeping (shortlisted for the Prix Aurora) and Bedtime Story, a bestseller in 2010. A respected reviewer and critic, he lives in Victoria with his family.

Willow Yamauchi is a Vancouver-based writer, author of Adult Child of Hippies, and an artist. An Adult Child of Hippies (ACOH) herself, Willow has found this group of survivors to be under represented in culture, and believes that this invisible minority needs to come out from behind the Bead Curtain. Willow parents two children with her husband, Ron. They try not to traumatize them, but it is probably too late. This is her first book.

Beryl Young writes poems, stories and radio talks and is the author of three children’s books. Her fiction and non-fiction books are based on real life and are about ordinary kids who have extraordinary adventures and challenges in their lives. Her first fiction book Wishing Star Summer (2001) was on BC best-seller lists and received many award nominations. Her non-fiction book Charlie: a Home Child’s Life in Canada (2009) has been short-listed for many awards across Canada. Her newest book, Follow the Elephant has just won the 2010 Silver Moonbeam Medal (US). Beryl lives in Vancouver and has three children and four grandchildren.