Word on the Hills talks to Christopher Black. Chris says that he’s continuing the journey that began in the UK as a working class lad brought to Canada by his parents for better opportunities and continued in steel town Hamilton as a high school and university student where he studied psychology, led student strikes, then ended up in lawschool. But all through those years he wanted to write and act. He tried to drop out of law to do that, going to acting school for 3 years and forming an acting company in Toronto that lasted 5 years but then he was forced by economics back into law. He became a trial lawyer, which was the next best thing to acting. Then spent 15 years in Europe at the international court in the Hague defending presidents and generals accused of war crimes, all the while trying to write. In the past few years, having the time to actually do it, he has produced a novel, a collection of poetry, some short stories and many political-legal essays, and when he gets frustrated trying to write even a line, he picks up his guitar to find a way through.

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Meet Kris Rennie, a local author, volunteer, grandma, mom and wife. Born in Montreal, she relocated to Northumberland in 1985, she has served the community as a counsellor, teacher’s aide, scouting and soccer volunteer. She loves a road trip and has toured coast to coast. Always the creative writer, she joined several writers’ groups. When asked where she was from, her reply might have been either, “From the lost and found” or “From the wind and the trees”. That changed in 2019 with a single ping from her computer…join us for the big reveal!

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Janet Stobie is a writer, storyteller and ordained minister, who lives in Peterborough, Ontario. During Covid 19 Janet has been busy completing two writing projects. Rajah Becomes a True King and Breakthrough Moments, two very different books. Including these two new ones, Janet has written and published four children’s picture books, three short story collections, two novels and one worship resource. In addition Janet writes a column for the Millbrook Times, writes a blog that is part of her website, enjoys filling in for colleagues on Sunday mornings at church, and would normally be doing guest speaking at fundraisers and group meetings. Janet likes variety.

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Conrad Beaubien’s love of storytelling has engaged him in a life of the arts. A creator, writer and director of films, his expression includes music, painting and sculpture. Currently writing for the stage, Conrad has garnered audiences for recent theatre works: Stringman’, ‘ Back of Hoards Station’, ‘Bridge Street’ and ‘The Undoing of Billy Slim’. Living in Prince Edward County, he shares a two centuries old worker’s cottage with the squirrels in the attic. Conrad is a columnist for the Wellington Times and a regular contributor to Watershed Magazine. 

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Meet Erin Silver, who has been writing professionally for 20 years. Her work has appeared in everything from The Washington Post and The Globe and Mail to Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping, among many other North American magazines, newspapers and blogs. Her first book, Just Watch Me, is a middle grade novel about social media, video games and divorce. It won the bronze medal in the Uncommon Quest Writing Competition and a publishing contract with Common Deer Press. Her picture book, What Kids Did: Stories of Kindness and Invention in the Time of COVID-19 is about the ways kids around the world helped others during the pandemic. Erin has several other children’s books being published through 2023. She has a postgraduate journalism degree from Ryerson University and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from King’s College.

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This week we welcome Ronald Mackay. Ronald Mackay immigrated to Canada in 1976 from Mexico, where he had been working in international development. He has made the transition from academic to creative writing in the years since retiring from university teaching. He has already published a memoir about working life on the island of Tenerife before mass tourism. Now he has just published his first-hand account of life behind the Iron Curtain, in the 1960s when the communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu ruled Romania entitled, TheKilt Behind The Curtain.

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Laurie Ray Hill is best known in this area as a playwright. Several of her plays have been produced locally and one of her plays was selected as a finalist in the Theatre B.C. Canadian National Playwrighting Competition and another as Eastern Ontario Drama League’s Best Original Script. Laurie has spent many years running creative writing groups and classes, some through Loyalist College. She has also met many families and individuals in our listening area through her work in Vision Loss Rehabilitation. She travelled in Northumberland and Peterborough for CNIB and later in Hastings and Prince Edward, teaching travel skills to people with low or no vision. All along, she has been secretly writing novels. Recently retired, she is happy to work on bringing these to light. She is pleased that her novel, Paper Stones, is being published by Inanna.

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Antony Di Nardo has just published his fifth book of poetry, Gone Miss ng. He wrote his first poem when he was sixteen but published his first collection, Alien Correspondent (Brick Books) when he was 61. Early on in his adult life, Antony had some poetry and fiction accepted by the Northern Ontario Poetry Anthology and the Squatchberry Journal but his long career as a teacher and school administrator took him away from poetry. It wasn’t until he was anticipating and then actually retiring that he felt able to immerse himself in poetry again. Recently he wrote an article for the journal, Fiddlehead, Among the Foxgloves: Recollections of a Sexagenarian Poet so we start the programme by asking him about this.

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Kurt Palka was born and educated in Austria. He began his working life in Africa where he wrote for the African Mirror and made wildlife films in Kenya and Tanzania. While working as a journalist, he covered the war in Vietnam and events in the Middle East for television. He has worked on international stories for CTV and GLOBAL TV, written for American and Canadian publications such as the Chronicle Herald and the Globe and Mail, and worked as a Senior Producer for the CBC. CLARA (originally published in hardcover as PATIENT NUMBER 7) his fifth novel was a finalist for the Hammett Prize. He is also the author of THE PIANO MAKER and THE HOUR OF THE FOX, published in July 2018 by McLelland and Stewart, is Kurt’s seventh novel

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Shane Joseph is the author of six novels and three collections of short stories. Shane’s second novel, After the Flood, a dystopian novel of hope, was released in 2009 and won the Write Canada Award for best novel in the futuristic/fantasy category. This novel was released in 2020 in a Kindle version. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies all over the world. His blog at www.shanejoseph.com is widely syndicated and he has a monthly column in The Sri Lankan Anchorman journal, and is the Book Reviews Editor for Devour Art & Lit Magazine. Shane’s fifth work of fiction, Paradise Revisited, a collection of short stories that continues to explore the immigrant experience, was short listed for the Re-Lit award in 2014. His latest novel, Circles in the Spiral, will be released in October 2020. Shane talks about his most recent work as an author and publisher.

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