This week we interview  Patricia Calder, who started writing at age 11 in a Hilroy notebook, which she carried on field adventures. Always a lover of stories, she has taught literature, journalism, and creative writing in high schools, community colleges, and at York University. Since devoting herself full-time to writing, ten of her short stories and creative nonfiction pieces have been published, and early in 2015 she released her novel Roadblock. Since then Pat has written, and illustrated with her photographs, an account of her visit to Sable Island and now one about her visit to the Spirit Bears of the Great Rain Forest. Today we discuss her latest book, her career as a photographer and the photography contest she is running for the Spirit of the Hills Festival of the Arts.

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Eric E Wright grew up in the west-end of Toronto, studied forestry at the University of Toronto then transferred to Columbia International University in South Carolina to receive training in overseas ministry. There he met and married Mary Helen, a nurse from SC. Together they served in Pakistan for 16 years.  While there he wrote five self-teaching textbooks for the seminary he taught at.  On their return to Canada he pastored a church in Toronto for nine years until the passion to write became too strong to deny. Eleven of Eric’s books have been published, some memoirs and five thrillers.

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‘The tragic tales, outrageous gossip and fascinating history of Ontario’s Prince Edward County are all grist for the mill…” for Janet Kellough.  Janet is a well-known historical mystery writer as well as being a storyteller, performer and the co-founder and organizer of the very successful festival, Women Killing It, held in Picton over the Labour Day Weekend. Her latest novel in the Thaddeus Lewis series set in Toronto in the 1850s, The Untoward Assassin has just been released.

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Christopher Black  is an international criminal lawyer and writer. His family immigrated to Canada when he was 8 years old. He attended university in Hamilton, and then Toronto. He spent 30 years as a trial lawyer in Toronto except for 7 years in the mid-80’s when he dropped out to study acting and formed his own theatre company TheatreDynamics. When the money ran out he returned to criminal law. For the past 16 years he has spent most of his time in Europe and Africa defending generals and presidents accused of war crimes.  Since 2015 he has lived in Campbellford.  Throughout his legal career he has kept writing and has succeeded in publishing in many genres over the years.

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Word on the Hills interviews John Cosway, a Toronto-born-and-raised high school dropout who learned early in life that he had a way with words – and pictures.  Kicked out of high school twice in the 1950s for lack of interest, he embraced the news media for his self-education, delivering the Toronto Star for eight years, working as a copy boy at the Globe and Mail for three years and in 1963, thanks to Robert Turnbull, then city editor of the Globe and Mail, launching into a half century of reporting and editing at newspapers across Canada – from the Chatham Daily News to the Toronto Sun. His book highlights his numerous brushes with fame from behind the lens, from Frankie Avalon in 1959, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Ronnie Hawkins and others in the 1960s, and Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Rich and others in the 1970s. In 2017, he ended his 10-year stint as a Wayback Times columnist to devote full attention to scanning his original negatives. With his 75th birthday approaching, he felt it was time to share his mostly unpublished photos and a handful of photos that had limited public exposure.

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This week we interview Stephen Skyvington. about his new book. His columns regularly appear in newspapers all across Canada, under the banner Opinions and Observations. Formerly the manager of government relations for the Ontario Medical Association, where he spent six and a half years lobbying elected officials and civil servants at all three levels of government, Stephen is currently the president of PoliTrain Inc., a public relations firm he founded in 2001. In addition to being a full-time registered lobbyist, Stephen also has a great deal of experience in community and stakeholder relations, as well as media and government relations. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

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We are devoting this week’s episode to the exciting festival, now in its third year, organized by authors, Vicki Delany and Janet Kellough. WOMEN KILLING IT is a hugely successful festival celebrating Canadian women crime writers and all the genres of crime and mystery writing. It takes place in Picton, Prince Edward County, on the Labour Day weekend. Join us to hear all about it!

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This week we are rebroadcasting a show we made with Linda Hutsell Manning when she was researching material for her memoir about teaching in a one room school house in Cobourg in the 60s. Linda has had a long and successful career as a children’s author, poet, novelist and playwright. Recently, her 2 act comedy A Certain Singing Teacher was produced by VOS and  she published a new story for children with Common Deer Press, Finding Moufette.  Now her memoir is complete and will be published by Blue Denim Press this fall. This show will tell you what you can expect from Linda’s new book —something to look forward to this September.

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This week, we are repeating a programme we made with Marie-Lynn Hammond some time ago now. Marie Lynn Hammond has worked in a great many formats over the years, writing poetry, plays, short fiction, radio essays and non-fiction magazine pieces, as well as two screen plays and she has just finished co-writing a YA novel. She is also an experienced editor. But her primary focus has always been song-writing. She with Bob Bossin, founded the folk group Stringband and she has been writing and performing her songs, to great acclaim, ever since. She released her latest CDs in 2013, entitled Hoofbeats and Creatures. Since coming to Cobourg she has produced and directed her own play Beautiful Deeds/ De Beaux Gestes, for the Spirit of the Hills’ Festival of the Arts, 2017 as well as organizing the concert for that event. And this year she is deeply involved in the second SOTH Festival of the Arts planned for October 24-26, 2019.

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