This summer we plan to look back over the years to the first programmes we archived in 2014. This week we are rebroadcasting a conversation between Gwynn and Felicity made to introduce themselves to the audience for Word on the Hills. We hope you enjoy it.
Shane Joseph
This week we are delighted to welcome Shane Joseph again to Word on the Hills. Shane is a well-known Canadian novelist, blogger, reviewer, short story writer, and publisher at Blue Denim Press. He began writing as a teenager living in Sri Lanka and has never stopped. He is the author of an ever increasing number of novels and three collections of short stories. His short stories and articles have appeared in several Canadian anthologies and in literary journals around the world. You can find out more about Shane at his website www.shanejoseph.com
Felicity Sidnell Reid
In this episode, Gwynn interviews Felicity about how Word on the Hills began and her new book of poetry Where Sun Meets Shadow. Felicity invited Gwynn to partner her in a proposal for this radio series, Word on the Hills, when the new radio station northumberland897.ca was looking for content in 2013. To our enduring surprise it has run ever since and is now the longest running series on 89.7 FM. In 2015, Felicity’s novel Alone: A Winter in the Woods was released by Hidden Brook Press, followed by the e-book in 2020. Her first poetry collection The Yellow Magnolia was released in 2021 followed by The Many Faces, Aeolus House, 2022. This year Aeolus House published her new poetry collection Where Sun Meets Shadow. Her short fiction and poems have been published in both print and online journals and anthologies.
Josée Sigouin
Josée Sigouin is French Canadian and lives in Toronto/Tkaronto with her Chinese Canadian husband and their two sons. Watching South Korean films and television series in the mid-2000s launched Josée on a quest to understand the fascinating culture in ever greater depth. She has learned the rudiments of the Korean language, visited the Land of the Morning Calm multiple times, and read extensively about its past and present. She also turned her attention to creative writing, taught by Dennis Bock and Kim Echlin at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and mentored by Omar El Akkad at a writing residency in Bangladesh. An early excerpt from Our Fifth Season was shortlisted for the 2011 Random House of Canada Student Award. In addition to travelling, Josée enjoys cycling, gardening, and welcoming birds to her tiny garden. Our Fifth Season is Josée’s first novel.
Leslie Bradford Scott
This week we welcome Leslie Bradford-Scott to Word on the Hills. Leslie is the author
of the upcoming memoir The Liar's Playbook (Simon & Schuster,
2026), an Indigo Most Anticipated pick for 2026. Her path to publication
was anything but conventional — she sold the book on proposal in three
weeks, without an agent, after more than two decades of writing
screenplays, essays, and building a multi-million-dollar personal care
brand, Walton Wood Farm, from her laundry room. She is currently at work
on her first novel. Leslie lives in Northumberland County.
Patricia Calder
Welcome to Patricia Calder! Pat Calder started writing as a teenager. Inspired by an uncle who reported for the CBC, she secretly wrote stories about her life in the 50s and 60s. As a young adult she travelled around Europe as far as Moscow. Inspired by Russian writers she studied in university, she explored communism. The secret of the night her 3-year-old brother died came out at a family event. When she began writing as a retiree, these early memories reappeared in her writing: nature, equality, and loss. In a parallel life, she was developing her eye as a photographer. Spirit of the Hills has been a major influence and support for Pat as a writer and as a photographer, with its arts shows and writing critique groups.
Ted Staunton
This week we welcome Ted Staunton. Ted Staunton wrote his first story long ago, as a class assignment at university. He barely handed it in on time, but he’s glad he did: it became the picture book Puddleman. Now the author of something like fifty books, he writes for all ages, and he’s getting better. His YA novel Who I’m Not won the 2014 CCBC John Spray Mystery Award. Ted’s work has also been nominated for Silver Birch, Red Maple, Hackmatack, Arthur Ellis, BC Stellar, and City of Toronto awards, among others. His work has also been published internationally, in a variety of languages. Ted speaks, performs, and leads workshops in schools, libraries and festivals across Canada. As well, he teaches the Writing Children’s Fiction courses at George Brown College.
Kim Fahner
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46 Publishing) and her next book of poetry, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. Kim was a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and she recently won first place in The Ampersand Review’s 2024 Essay Contest for her essay, “What You Carry.” Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Kate Rogers
Our guest this week is Kate Rogers. Her poem “False Spring” is forthcoming in the Caitlin Press anthology, Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice, Editor Yvonne Blomer. Kate won first prize in subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Triumphant Award for her five-poem suite, “My Mother’s House.” Her poem “The Giraffe-bone Knife Set” was shortlisted for ROOM Magazine’s Poem of the Year contest. Kate’s poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Asia. Kate lives in Cobourg where she can often be found walking the harbour. Frontenac House says of Baba Yaga and the Girl Who Ate the Rope that in this collection Kate Rogers reimagines family, folklore, and climate grief. Her muse: the Slavic witch “Baba Yaga, both matriarch and mirror.”
Kathryn Macdonald
Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., and other countries. Her new collection The Blue Gate, to be published by Frontenac House in the spring 2026, explores the surprise of love, the shock of loss, and challenges boundaries and liminal spaces. It probes into a love affair that defies conventions, capturing the narrator’s voice from the first lyrical poem. With the death of the belovèd, an invitation to fly to Kenya arrives; it’s accepted; and the long title poem ravels and unravels reality. Poems in the final section question the loss of intimacy, loneliness, change, and unattainable acceptance.
The collection seeks – what – understanding, consolation, release, or does it ask whether love enriches or leaves one lost?
Word on the Hills Radio Program 