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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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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