Novelist Shelagh Hurley grew up in Ottawa.  In truth, she grew up at the cottage on the Rideau Lake system, which her parents bought and built in the early 60s, so it’s very much in her bones. It’s on the same lake as the Queen’s Biology station. Each summer as a child she saw adults spending their time pooting about having a blast– that’s how it appeared to her, but of course they were doing all manner of research. She thought this wonderful, so she went to Queens, did a biology degree and then a Masters in New Brunswick and then back to Queens to do a PhD, which got hijacked by her going to law school which is another story. She’s been a small-town lawyer her entire career, over thirty years, in Picton. She’s always written, both as a lawyer (but only some of that writing is fiction), and as “writer”.  Blackwater Bluff is the first novel she’s let out of the gate. Along the way, there were children and the vagaries of life, and always the cottage, to which she and her partner will retire in the very near future. Then she hopes to get back to where she started, chasing birds and insects, and writing.

Part 1

Part 2