radio series

Janet Trull

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This week our guest is writer and novelist, Janet Trull. Janet’s essays and short stories have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Living Magazine, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, subTerrain Magazine, and Geist among others. She has won several writing awards, including a CBC Canada Writes challenge, a Western Magazine Award nomination and a Commonwealth Fiction prize. Her collection of short fiction, Hot Town and Other Stories, was published in 2016 by At Bay Press (Winnipeg). Once a Storm, published as part of At Bay Press’s “From the Heart” series, is a small volume memorializing those who have lost their struggle with drug addiction. Trull’s new collection of short stories, Something’s Burning, was a CBC Recommended Read for Fall 2022, and is now available worldwide. Janet Trull is excited to announce that her novel, The End of the Line, is due for publication by Blue Denim Press on October 1, 2023.

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Karin Wells

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This show is an encore presentation of Karin Wells’ discussion of and readings from her book More than a Footnote. KARIN WELLS is an author, journalist, and lawyer. She is also a sometime actress and worked – briefly – in a pea canning factory. Her latest book, More than a Footnote: Canadian Women You Should Know, is a curious and often irreverent look at ten Canadian women who have been forgotten or ignored. Her 2020 book The Abortion Caravan: When Women Shut Down Government in the Battle for the Right to Choose (Second Story Press) was the winner of the OHS (Ontario Historical Society) Alison Prentice Award and short listed for the 2021 Shaughnessy Cohen prize. She regularly contributes to Watershed Magazine focussing on life in Northumberland, Quinte and Prince Edward County. Karin has been recognized as one of this country’s leading radio journalists. Over her career she worked in more than fifty countries making radio documentaries for CBC radio’s The Sunday Edition, hosted by Michael Enright. Her radio documentary work made her a three time winner of the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for investigative journalism.

Karin Wells lives in Port Hope with her little dogs Mimi and Darwin. She is currently working on a new book for Second Story Press and a podcast for CBC Radio based on More than a Footnote.

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Michael Fraser

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Michael Fraser is published in Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 and 2018. He has won numerous awards, including Freefall Magazine’s 2014 and 2015 poetry contests, the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize, the 2018 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition, and the League of Canadian Poets’ 2022 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize. His latest collection, With My Eyes Wide Open is published by Exile Editions.

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Ruth E Walker

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 Award-winning author Ruth E. Walker loves the broad landscapes novels provide but occasionally challenges herself to write in the demanding confines of poetry and short fiction. An eclectic writer, she follows inspiration, characters and questions to the page. Her novels are represented by Ali McDonald, 5 Otter Literary and Ruth lives, writes and edits at her home in Oshawa and her riverside cottage in Haliburton County. She is an active volunteer in the arts community, including serving on the Haliburton Arts Council’s Literary Arts Roundtable.

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Chris Cameron and John Unruh

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This week’s episode is a repeat broadcast of our interviews with Chris Cameron and John Unruh about podcasting.

Chris is a musician, freelance writer and editor. His first book, a memoir of his singing years, Dr. Bartolo’s Umbrella and Other Tales from my Surprising Operatic Life (Seraphim Editions), was published in 2017. His book of humorous fiction, Thorneside Stories: A Mix of Sun and Cloud (Iguana Books) was published in 2022. Christopher brings his respect for the beauty and power of words to his editing and feature-writing at Watershed magazine. For three years he was co-host and sound editor for Word on the Hills. He enjoys playing bass and singing with the trio What Fun! He continues to marvel at his luck, doing what he loves in beautiful Northumberland County.

John Unruh is a Northumberland writer concerned with the value of broken things and how communities come together to fix them. He’s also a consulting technical writer and editor. John grew up in Winnipeg and moved to Cobourg in 2001 where he began working as a documentation specialist and editorial advisor. John volunteered to set up and run the ticketing system for the Northumberland Festival of the Arts in 2022 and has become a highly valued source of answers to technical questions. He has published two short stories in Hill Spirits V, Blue Denim Press, and a poem in 101 Portraits, Wet Ink Books in 2022, as well as other stories in previous years. He has also written several novels which are in various stages of completion and has made a podcast series of his novel Ziggurat.

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Catherine Hudson

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This week we welcome Catherine Hudson. Catherine’s new book “Get Your Cow out of My Kitchen!” is a stirring collection of short stories that reflect upon the many animals that have impacted the author’s life. Each entry is a beautiful tribute to a special animal friend and highlights just how special the connection between animal and human can be. A lover of animals since she was a child, Catherine fell in love with bull terriers after watching the Disney film “The Incredible Journey”, as a teen. By the time she was in her early forties, Catherine had become one of the top bull terrier breeders in the country and, along with competing with her dogs, she started her own obedience school, “My Bark Avenue Academy,” which she still runs today. Currently, she resides in eastern Ontario, with her dog Ladybug and can be found daily surrounded by her many four-legged students both adults and puppies.

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Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy

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This week we are rebroadcasting our interviews with Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy.

Abigail Miller is Archivist at the Northumberland County Archives and Museum. She is responsible for building the strategic vision and overseeing operations at NCAM. Abigail holds a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology and Folklore, graduating from Memorial University and the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College.

Katie Kennedy is Curator for NCAM, focused on authentic community collaborations. Katie graduated from University of Ottawa with a BA in Classical Studies and was educated in the university’s Museum of Classical Antiquities. Katie is currently enrolled in the Ontario Museum Association’s Certificate in Museum Studies and is a participant in the OMA Conference Mentorship program.

Abigail and Katie tell us about their work and plans for the new archives and museum, now under construction, which will share a building with a rebuilt Golden Plough Lodge and is due to open in the summer of 2024.

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Hugh Brewster

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This week we welcome Hugh Brewster to the programme. Being able to create books about history is a dream job for Hugh, since he’s always been enthralled by history. As an editor for Scholastic from 1972 to 1984 in both Toronto and New York, he was involved in the creation of Scholastic’s Canadian children’s publishing program. Between 1984 and 2004 he was the publisher of Madison Press Books in Toronto where he helped to create a number of successful books for both adults and young readers, including Exploring the Titanic, which has sold over one million copies and Titanic: An Illustrated History, which provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie.

As an author, he has written fifteen books including Anastasia’s Album (1996) which won both the Silver Birch and Red Cedar Awards.  And he has won multiple awards for many of his other books including Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, a Governor General’s Award nominee in 2007, and From Vimy to Victory which was a Finalist for the T-D Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Norma Fleck Award in 2015. An adult book RMS TITANIC: Gilded Lives on a Fatal Voyage was a national bestseller and published in six countries in 2012. He has written several plays and LAST DAY, LAST HOUR: Canada’s Great War On Trial was presented in the fall of 2018 as the centerpiece of Cobourg’s Armistice 18 commemoration which he helped organize. His latest book, published in Fall ’22, is UNSINKABLE LUCILE: How A Farm Girl Became the Queen of Fashion and Survived the Titanic. 

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Jay Dart

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This week we welcome Jay Dart. Jay is a Canadian drawist, author and designer whose practice includes bookworks, animated videos and mixed media installations. Dart’s work has been shown in galleries and art fairs including exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Regina and recently at the Art Gallery of Northumberland; as well as internationally in Paris, New York, and Amsterdam. He is the recipient of multiple grants and honors including from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and a National Magazine Award for editorial illustration. His work has been featured on CBC Radio and TV including a profile on The Exhibitionists. He is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Fine Art programme. Currently, he lives and draws with his family in a small hamlet outside the sprawl of Toronto, and he teaches Drawing and Design at Durham College and Sheridan College.

J D Carpenter

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 This week we welcome back J.D. Carpenter to Word on the Hills. David was born in Toronto in 1948. Some years later, he graduated from York University with a B.A.Hons. and then from Queen’s with a B.Ed. He worked as a journalist for Daily Racing Form in Montreal, Windsor, Fort Erie and Toronto before becoming a teacher. After four years of teaching elementary school, he began 25 years of teaching English and then became Head of Department for Special Education at Leaside High School in Toronto He is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, A Road through the Corn: Prince Edward County Poems, 1982-2022 was published by Cressy Lakeside Press in 2022. He is also the author of six novels, including a series featuring sleuth Campbell Young and his friends set in the racing world so familiar to this writer. He is at present working on the final draft of Black Tupelo, the concluding volume in this series. The County Murders (Cressy Lakeside, 2016) has a new protagonist, a journalist based in a small town in Prince Edward County.

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