Join us this week to meet Marie Prins. Marie is a remedial reading teacher with her own practice, The Reading Room. She lives with her artist husband in an historic, octagonal home in Colborne. She writes memoir, poetry, and children’s books, including a mid-grade novel The Girl from the Attic which was the Uncommon Quest 2019 Silver Award winner from Common Deer Press and is to be released by them in October. Currently Marie is a participant in the 12×12 Challenge to write 12 picture books in 12 months, which is harder than she anticipated. She is a member of Hill Spirits Writers Group (and contributor to their anthologies), Canscaip, and SCBWI East Canada.

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Ted Staunton’s words and music have entertained audiences of all ages for years. You’ve heard him at the Port Hope Jazz Fest, Cultivate, and the Capitol, and venues across Canada. His books are published around the world and he has two brand new ones to share right now from Scholastic Canada: Friends for Real, a picture book and It Seemed Like a Good Idea…Canadian Feats, Facts, and Flubs, for ages 9-90, written with his son Will. Catch their music video about it on uTube and join us on the show to hear our talk with Ted.

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Jessica Outram says she’s been lucky to have time to pursue the things she loves. She’s a playwright, director, actor, singer, publisher, reader, teacher, principal, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and poet. She’s a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, a proud citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario and a Creativity Coach and Reiki Practitioner. In June 2019 she was appointed Cobourg’s 4th Poet Laureate. For more than twenty years, she’s worked as an educator in Ontario in both Elementary and Secondary schools. Creativity-in-community is important to her. Here are some of the local groups she’s connected to: Northumberland Players, Safe Harbour and SONG, Spirit of the Hills Arts Association, and Cobourg Poetry Workshop.

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Meet Michael Croucher who was born in England during the last year of WW2. His family moved to Canada in 1953 and settled in Toronto. He served in the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department for 18 years, and became a member of The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigating organized crime. His police experience has provided plenty of inspiration and background for his fiction. An award–winning crime writer, he has published two novels: Bravo’s Veil and Diamond Run and he is building his list of crime and mystery novels and a collection of short stories, He is also working on some memoir material. He and his wife now live in Cobourg. They have two married daughters, and five grandchildren. When not writing, he reads fiction, researches writing and reading and other areas of interest, and follows his favorite podcasts.

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This week we are rerunning a show we made last year with Ruth Clarke. .Ruth has written in many genres over the years but WHAT GOES AROUND is Ruth’s first full-length novel; her first publications: BEFORE THE SILENCE and WHAT WE HOLD DEAR were history books, but even then she used fictional characters as narrators—an element several readers have called magic realism. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and her journalism has been published in daily and weekly newspapers and magazines. She is a veteran of the writing and publishing community where she was promotion manager for a publishing company, co-founder of a book distribution company; she has worked for the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Canada Council’s National Book Festival. She now divides her time between Canada and Latin America.

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This week meet Liz Torlee. Liz grew up in England and worked in Germany before emigrating to Canada in her early twenties. During her career in advertising and market research, she’s had a wide range of articles, reports and points of view published. But her real love has always been fiction. She has written short stories and poems for many years and became serious about her novel and the possibility of getting it published about five years ago. The Way Things Fall, will be published by Blue Denim Press in Oct 2020. Liz lives with her husband in Toronto. She loves reading, star-gazing, all animals and all kinds of travel.

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Vanessa Westermann’s debut mystery, An Excuse For Murder, was published in 2019 by The Wild Rose Press. An avid reader of mysteries, Vanessa is a former Arthur Ellis Awards judge, and has given a talk on the evolution of women’s crime writing, at the Toronto Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She holds an M.A. in English Literature, as well as a Bachelor of Education, and has taught creative writing. Her blog, “Vanessa’s Picks”, features literary reviews and author interviews. She is a member of both Crime Writers of Canada and The International Thriller Writers. Vanessa’s short story “Medicine” is appearing in Carrick Publishing’s latest crime anthology, A Grave Diagnosis. Using Zoom, we talk to Vanessa in Germany where she has been since the Covid pandemic cancelled her flight home

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This week we are re-broadcasting a show we made a year ago with S.M Hurley. She grew up in Ottawa and at the family cottage on the Rideau Lake system, which is very much in her bones. It’s on the same lake as the Queen’s Biology station. Each summer she saw adults spending their time pottering about having a blast. She thought this wonderful, so off she went to Queens and did a biology degree, then a Masters and then began a PhD which got hijacked by her going to law school which is another story. She’s been a small-town lawyer in Picton her entire career. She’s always written, both as a lawyer and as a “writer”. BLACKWATER BLUFF is the first novel she’s let out of the gate. Along the way there was 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. She is now doing a final edit on her second novel and has started her third.

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Known as “The History Guy of Brighton” Dan Buchanan is engaged in many activities related to local and Ontario history, he is a frequent speaker to historical and social organizations, the author of three books and the founder of Brighton History Week. In 2015 Dan published his first book, Murder in the Family: The Dr. King Story.  His third book is being released  in August 2020, entitled The Wreck of HMS Speedy: The Tragedy That Shook Upper Canada. Dan is a founder of the annual Brighton History Week. Since 2000 Dan has done community genealogy research and provides the details at www.treesbydan.com. He has a database of well over 100,000 individuals radiating out from his own families who settled in the north end of Brighton Township.

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Join us here to learn how authors may be launching their new books in this difficult time of pandemic. Heather M. O’Connor is an award-winning writer of books for kids and teens. She is also an editor and workshop presenter. Her first picture book Fast Friends, illustrated by Claudia Dávila, is published by Scholastic Canada and available in both English and French from July 21st, 2020. In 2015 she visited us on Word on the Hills to tell us about Betting Game, when her debut novel with Orca Books was published. She also writes short stories, fantasy and historical fiction. Heather lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

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