2010 Authors



Ivan Coyote was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. An award-winning author of five collections of short stories, one novel, two CD’s, four short films and a renowned performer, Ivan’s first love is live storytelling, and over the last fifteen years she has become an audience favourite at music, poetry, spoken word and writer's festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam. Ivan’s column, Loose End has appeared monthly in Xtra West magazine since 2001. Her first novel, Bow Grip, was released in the fall of 2006, and was awarded the Relit award for best fiction and named by the American Library Association as a Stonewall honor book in literature.

 



Bob Barton was born in Hamilton, Ontario and studied at McMaster University.  After a career in teaching and with the Ontario Ministry of Education, he became a professional storyteller.  He has been a feature storyteller at festivals across North America, England and Australia.  Since 1969 he has published nineteen books for both children and teachers including The Little Book of Northern Tales: The Bear Says North, and Telling Stories Your Way.  He works as an artist in schools with Prologue to the Performing Arts, and the Writer’s Union of Canada “Writers-in-the-schools” program.  Bob is also a course instructor with the Additional Qualifications course Dramatic Arts Intermediate Basic at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.  In June 2007 he was presented with an Award of Excellence in Continuing Education by OISE – University of Toronto. 

 

What’s New

Sharon Butala
has published sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction and is best known for her 1994 non-fiction The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature. She is the recipient of many awards and prizes including the 1998 Marian Engel Award and has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award twice (once for fiction, once for non-fiction) and for the Commonwealth Writers Award, and with her late husband, a Saskatchewan cattle rancher,received five conservation awards. She is an Officer in the Order of Canada, has two honorary doctorates, and was just invested in the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. She is currently working on a novel, as yet untitled, her first since the 1998 The Garden of Eden. Her last book was The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder, (HarperCollins, 2008).
 
Steven Keewatin Sanderson, member of the James Smith Cree Nation was born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and moved to Vancouver in 1999 to attend. Working for five years in animation and video games, mostly in storyboards and character design, he grew weary of the studio system and ventured out on his own. With a grant from Canada Council for the Arts, he developed the story for his fist short animated film called Darkness Calls, a story of an Aboriginal youth struggling with suicidal thoughts. A successful comic book followed. To date there have been five comic book that have followed including An Invited Threat, Level Up, Just a Story, The unpublished Journey of the Healer, Path of the Warrior and the upcoming Finding the Light.  Since the release of Darkness Calls he has traveled extensively across Canada and the U.S.
 


Annabel Lyon’s first book, the short-story collection Oxygen, was nominated for the Danuta Gleed and ReLit awards. Her second collection, The Best Thing for You, was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. Her first novel for adults, The Golden Mean, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth Prize, the Amazon Best First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. It won the Rogers' Writers Trust Award. In addition to creative writing, Annabel Lyon has studied music, philosophy, and law. She lives in New Westminster, B.C., with her husband and two children.
 
Cathleen With is a writer from Vancouver, and a graduate of the UBC MFA Creative Writing program. She has travelled extensively in SE Asia and Northern Canada where she has worked as a teacher for Korean children, Khmer NGO workers, Arctic teenagers, and Thai street children. Skids, her short story collection about street kids from the Davie Village to the Downtown Eastside, was short-listed for the 2007 Relit Award. Though her work is fiction, many of the stories in Skids are based on her friends’ voices, some now gone, and her own experiences battling addictions and depression in her youth. Cathleen has also trained as a Learning Assistance, Drama in Education, and English teacher, and enjoys working one on one with alternative youth who have trouble adapting to the public school system. She is currently a part-time adult education teacher in Vancouver. Her first novel, Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison (Penguin Group 2009), is about a young girl from the Mackenzie Delta who is in jail with her baby.
 


Richard Van Camp, a Dogrib (Tlicho) Dene from Fort Smith, NWT, is an internationally renowned storyteller and best-selling author. He is the author of the novel, The Lesser Blessed, two collections of short stories, Angel Wing Splash Pattern and The Moon of Letting Go as well as two children’s books with Cree artist, George Littlechild: A Man Called Raven and What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses?. His baby book: Welcome Song for Baby: A Lullaby for Newborns was the official selection of the Books for BC Babies program and was given to every newborn baby in British Columbia in 2008. His first comic book On the Path of Honour, a collaboration with Cree artist, Steve Sanderson about gang violence and physical fitness for Healthy Aboriginal Network was released in 2009. Richard was awarded Storyteller of the Year for both Canada and the US by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers in 2007
 
Bren Kolson is a Metis poet and author born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories of Tso’Tine and Polish descent. She is the recipient of the 2009 NorthWords Prize for her memoir Myth of the Barrens.  Several of Ms. Kolson’s poems were published in Writing The Circle, A Western Canadian Native Women’s Anthology in 1990. In 2005-06 Bren was short-listed in the short story category for the CBC Literary Awards. She attended the first Aboriginal Emerging Writers Residency at Banff, Alberta and in 2007, the Mother’s Journey Writers Retreat at the Quesnel River in British Columbia with renowned author Maria Campbell and ten Canadian Metis writers.
 
Jamie Bastedo’s work is all about taking science to the streets. Whether playing zany environmental songs around a campfire, hosting lively nature shows on CBC radio, performing as an arctic explorer at schools and museums, leading ecotours, portraying a backwoods nature nut on video, or writing fiction or non-fiction works, Jamie spreads a catching enthusiasm for the land. Well established as a popular science writer, he has written 10 books on northern nature, the latest being a Sila’s Revenge (Red Deer Press, 2009), a sequel to his novel about arctic climate change, On Thin Ice, plus hundreds of natural history articles in magazines such as Up Here, Backpacker, Winter Living, and Canadian Geographic. Jamie’s passion for popularizing natural science brought him national honour in 2002 when he won Canada’s Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion. His outstanding contributions to the conservation and promotion of northern nature also earned him Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee Medal.


 
Cathy Jewison’s  career has focused on the written word – she’s worked as a newspaper reporter, copy editor and government communicator. After moving to Yellowknife in 1986, Cathy dabbled in poetry, drama, and creative non-fiction, but settled on the short story as her preferred literary form. Since then, her quirky characters have appeared on the pages of magazines and anthologies. Cathy’s first book, a collection of stories, set in Yellowknife, The Ugly Truck and Dog Contest and Other Tales of Northern Life, was published by Borealis Press in 2009.
 


Annelies Pool has published articles, columns and editorials in more
than 30 Canadian periodicals and is a first place recipient of the Jack Sanderson Award for Editorial Writing. She is best-known for the funny, personal columns which she has been writing for many years in various incarnations, the most recent of which is Prelude Notes in above&beyond, Canada’s Arctic Journal. Her essay Family Spilling Over was published in the inspirational anthology A Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart in 2009. Annelies’s first book iceberg tea, a collection of her favourite columns, will be launched at the 2010 NorthWords Writers Festival.
 
Mindy Willett has called the north home for over 20 years.  She used to be a classroom teacher but now works as a writer. Currently she’s co-authoring 10 children’s books with Aboriginal storytellers in The Land is Our Storybook series celebrating the diversity of northern people, places and stories. The first two books in the series, We Feel Good Out Here and The Delta is My Home were published in the spring of 2008.  The Delta is My Home was selected as one of the top ten non-fiction books of the year by the Ontario Libraries Association and was nominated for a Silver Birch Award.  The third and fourth books in the series Living Stories and Come and Learn with Me were published in 2009. The fifth book Proud to be Inuvialuit is being published in 2010.
 



James Pokiak is an Inuvialuit subsistence harvester from Tuktoyuktuk, Northwest Territories. He is an outfitter, hockey player, drum-dancer, family man as well as a storyteller and co-author (with Mindy Willett) of Proud to be Inuvialuit, the fifth book in The Land is Our Storybook children’s book series. He invites everyone to come on up to Tuk for a visit and dip their toes in the Arctic Ocean.

 

Deborah Kigjugalik Webster is originally from Baker Lake, Nunavut. After obtaining a degree in Anthropology from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario she moved to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories where she works as a heritage consultant. Her published work includes various papers, articles, and her book Harvaqtuurmiut Heritage. A mother of two daughters, Deborah is compelled to write culturally authentic stories about her Inuit culture and heritage. Her children’s book Avaalaaqiaq’s Adventure is scheduled to be released in mid-winter as well as 2 more stories. Deborah is currently writing her fifth book The Girl Who Was Made With Words with a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.