Join us for our discussion with award winning writer and illustrator Jan Thornhill. Born in Sudbury she grew up living on the outskirts of small communities where the fields and woods became her world. She and her friends travelled in packs, building forts, looking for meteorites, exploring dangerous abandoned houses and keeping their activities to themselves so as not to worry their parents!  She chose to go to OCAD and after she graduated decided to try free- lancing as an illustrator for magazines and newspapers and to her surprise found employment this way for over 10 years. After she met her husband Fred in 1981 and they had moved to a house they built in central Ontario, Jan started writing, something she had long wanted to do. Jan has won many awards including the 2015 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, a lifetime achievement award presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada,^[2]  the Norma Fleck Award in 2007 for her book I Found a Dead Bird: The Kids’ Guide to the Cycle of Life & Death.^[3]  and the 2017 Governor General’s Awards for The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk.

Part 1

Part 2