Our guest this week is Sue Davidson. After finishing a Bachelor of Journalism degree at Carleton University, Sue worked on a weekly newspaper in Renfrew and then went on to complete a Master of Library and Information at Western University. She was a librarian in Ottawa for many years, working in departmental libraries with the federal government. Her interest in short stories began in the mid-1990s when she took workshops with Ottawa writer Richard Taylor. She attended a summer week-long workshop at the Humber School for Writers and, more recently, began courses in the Creative Writing certificate program at the University of Toronto. Sue has had three short stories published. Dread Comes at Daybreak is her debut novel.
Blue Denim Press
Liz Torlee
This week we welcome Liz Torlee. Liz lived and worked in England and Germany before emigrating to Canada in her twenties. She built a long career in both advertising and market research but is now devoted to her real passion: storytelling.
A Long Walk With Fate (2025), published by Blue Denim Press, is Liz’s third novel. The previous two, also from Blue Denim Press, are The Way Things Fall (2020) and In Love With The Night (2022). She had two short stories published in 2024: Flight, in the anthology Will There Be A Sunset? (Chicken House Press), and Narrowing the Field, in the Hill Spirits VI anthology Change, (Blue Denim Press.) Her story Orion Winked (2025), was one of four chosen to be engraved on a picnic table, as part of the town of Cobourg’s Picnic on Poetry initiative.
Shane Joseph
This week meet Shane Joseph. Shane is a 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 seven 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. His latest novel, Empire in the Sand, (2022) is a tale of pharmaceutical scandals, robocalls electioneering, and family breakdown. You can find out more about Shane at his website www.shanejoseph.com
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Beverley Brewer
This week meet Beverley Brewer. Beverley was born and raised in Ontario; she lived in Toronto until she moved to her Muskoka cottage in 2021, with her husband Jack and their two black labs. When Bev graduated from the University of Toronto her ambition was to become a teacher, a missionary or a social worker. Her introduction to life skills teaching methodology and group facilitation at Seneca College set the stage for her life’s work. At Seneca, Bev’s life skills groups supported adult students in job readiness and academic upgrading. When Bev took a position in the social service worker diploma program at Seneca, she taught what she loved doing––group work and counselling and had the privilege of teaching in the program. Bev retired in her thirty-sixth year of teaching and learning in the community college system. In retirement, Bev writes short-fiction, and completed her first psychological character-driven novel, No One Knew. Her second large project is Dance into Light, a memoir. When she’s not writing, you can find her in a kayak or when the water freezes over, on snowshoes somewhere on the lake. She’s happy to have found like-minded friends who like to sing, hike and play pickle ball year-round.
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Word on the Hills Radio Program 