Poet, Michael Topa was born in Michigan and has lived and studied in many countries, including Canada, USA, and Afghanistan. He also travelled to India, Pakistan and Nepal.He spent four years in the United States Air Force as a Weather Observer during the Vietnam War and immigrated to Canada when his tour of duty ended, He has worked for many years as a Psycho-educational Consultant and is the co-founder and Director of Greenoaks Educational Services. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years.

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Jan Thornhill is the recipient of many awards for her writing and illustrations and this year was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Young People’s Literature, Illustrated Books for The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk. EXTRA EXTRA! 

JAN THORNHILL WINS TOP CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AWARD The nonfiction picture book Tragic Tale of the Great Auktook home the $30,000 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award.

 

 

 

 

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Drew Monkman  is a naturalist and writer whose nature column, “Our Changing Seasons,” appears regularly in the Peterborough Examiner. He is the author of three books. Two explore what is happening in the natural world each month of the year. They are Nature’s Year in the Kawarthas (2002) and Nature’s Year: Changing seasons in Central and Eastern Ontario (2012) Drew also co-authored The Big Book of Nature Activities: A year-round guide to outdoor learning (2016) with Jacob Rodenburg executive director of Camp Kawartha . The book is the winner of four awards including the Nautilus Book Award, which is a major American award for environmental writing.

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Hope Bergeron and Maggie Harper are the winners of Spirit of the Hills Festival of the Arts Writing Contests 2017. We hear about Hope’s writing and cartooning and listen to her story, The Gift. Maggie Harper tells us why she chooses to write haiku and reads her winning series of poems.

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