radio series

Shelagh Mathers (S M Hurley)

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Author Shelagh Mathers retired from her law practice in 2020, just as the pandemic moved into full gear. Though she misses the people she worked with she doesn’t miss the practice. And she quickly settled into retirement and did a fun turn as a co-host of a local radio show, The County, Naturally. Recently however she stepped back from that to focus full time on Book # 3 in her series about Augie De Graaf, Prince Edward County Crown Prosecutor, which is now proceeding apace. Her second book in this series is called The Sevens and was published in 2020. She now spends a lot of time at the cottage with family, including a new granddaughter, who, like all grandchildren, is the most wonderful thing in the world!

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Jennifer Bogart

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This week we talk to Jennifer Bogart. Jennifer is a writer, with three adult novels and two middle-grade books to her credit. For many years she was a publisher and editor at Morning Rain Publications and then became the owner of Let’s Talk Books, Cobourg’s independent book store. The store was featured in a Globe and Mail article in 2019 and is now celebrating its seventh year in business. She frequently hosts writers, whose books she admires and arranges very successful readings for them, as well as organizing a number of book clubs at the store for readers of different genres.

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Patrick Muldoon

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This week we talk with Patrick Muldoon. Patrick is the Branch Supervisor of the Warkworth Public Library, which is a part of the Trent Hills Library system.  He has always loved libraries and reading.  Patrick has degrees in English Literature and Education and before coming to the library, he had a 27 year career as an elementary school teacher.  The highlights of his teaching career included introducing children to Shakespeare and touring the county with student performances of many Shakespeare plays. Since retiring from education, he has been working at developing the collection and programs at the Warkworth Library.  His plans for making the Warkworth Library a dynamic community hub are well under way and he is here today to share what has been happening at the library, and his upcoming plans.

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Pat Calder

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This week we welcome Patricia Calder. Pat is a photographer and writer who loves nature. After retiring from a busy career as an English teacher, she has lived in the quiet village of Colborne where she writes in a sunroom overlooking Lake Ontario in the distance, her gardens at closer range, and birdfeeders. When she is thinking, she has a pleasant view out her window to inspire her stories. During her career as a teacher, she taught in 13 different schools, colleges, and at York U. As a photographer, she created a website, showed her horse images at the Royal Winter Fair, visited Sable Island to photograph the feral horses and BC’s Great Bear Rainforest to capture images of the Spirit Bears, and mounted several solo shows around Northumberland County. As a writer, she published a novel, Roadblock, and several stories in newspapers and anthologies locally; the most notable were “Stand down, soldier” written during the war in Afghanistan, and “The Gifts of Alzheimer’s” published in the Globe and Mail.

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Tom Pickering

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Meet Tom Pickering. The majority of Tom’s work life has been as a technical writer. His first job after graduation from the University of Alberta was to write training manuals for a company based in Edmonton. Several years after school, he returned to Ontario and continued with technical writing at IT and engineering related companies. Along the way, Tom amused himself with an avocation in art, studying at the Ontario College of Art, and in community theatre, where he performed onstage and wrote and directed plays. In later years, Tom moved to Northumberland County and continued his interest in theatre with the Northumberland Players for several years. More recently, Tom participated in the 2022 edition of the Northumberland Festival of the Arts, which brought together a wide assortment of artistic talent that was showcased across multiple venues within the county. Here he was introduced to new experiences, deepened existing friendships and made new ones. He is also a member of the Spirit of the Hills Arts Association and belongs to one of the Writer Critique groups that meet regularly to share and critique work of the group’s members. He lives in Cobourg with his wife Tracy and his dog Lily.

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Theresa Bailey

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This one’s for Moms on Mothers’ Day. For over 20 years Theresa has been training businesses and organizations and helping to plan for and adapt to change, through interactive, compelling and creative workshops and facilitated events.

As the founder of Canadian Hockey Moms, she has become a sought after and respected voice on the state of minor hockey in Canada.

With three hockey playing children across 10 years, over 32 teams (from house league to girls hockey to AAA), Theresa Bailey has managed 17 and been the president of a small association for the past three. She has built a community of over 40,000 Hockey Moms across the world to share knowledge, promote rational thought, current research, and showcase the newest hockey related brands. And now she has published a book giving a voice to hockey mums, the heart of the game. Please join us!

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Kate Rogers

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Kate Rogers describes herself as a transnational poet. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, the U.S. and U.K. During her more than two decades in Asia, Kate was inspired to write about the impact of colonialism and the destruction of the natural environment. Kate’s collection, Out of Place expresses her life in the liminal zone between countries, cultures and identities. Kate repatriated to Canada in December 2019 after spending one third of her life in Asia. The poems in Out of Place evoke for the reader the experience of being of a place, yet never belonging; they explore longing and transformation. Kate Rogers’ next poetry collection, The Meaning of Leaving, is forthcoming with Montreal-based publisher, Ace of Swords (AOS), in early 2024. Her poems recently appeared in SubTerrain, The Windsor Review and Looking Back at Hong Kong.

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Antony di Nardo

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Our celebration of Poetry Month continues with a conversation and reading  from Antony di Nardo which we made last year. Antony has written six books of poetry. His work appears widely in journals and anthologies across Canada and internationally, and has been translated into several languages. His long poem suite May June July was winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize for 2017 and was short-listed for a National Magazine Award. He spent the last years of a teaching career in Beirut where he launched his first book of poetry Alien, Correspondent in 2010. His collection Forget – Sadness – Grass was recently released by Ronsdale Press. The winner of the inaugural Don Gutteridge Poetry Award, Through Yonder Window Breaks is published by Wet Ink Books.

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Felicity Sidnell Reid

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This week, we talk with Word on the Hills’ co-producer and co-host, Felicity Sidnell Reid. After graduating from the University of London, Felicity arrived in Canada to spend seven years in New Brunswick. Then she moved to Ontario. Felicity has taught children from Grade 5 to university students and adults, in Canada, England and Thailand. She is the author of educational materials, including a book for teachers, ESL is Everybody’s Business (with Frances Parkin) and a series of textbooks for language learners. Her books include a novel Alone: A Winter in the Woods (Hidden Brook Press, 2015, e-book in 2020) and two poetry collections The Yellow Magnolia (Glentula Press, 2021) and The Many Faces (Aeolus House, 2022). Her poetry and short fiction have been published in anthologies, online journals and collections. She is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets and was a Board Member of Spirit of the Hills Arts Association for two four year terms. She also chaired the Spirit of the Hills Writers’ Group for many years retiring in January 2023. In 2017 and 2019 she led the executive committees of Spirit of the Hill’s Arts Festivals and was recognised with a Distinguished Civic Award from the Town of Cobourg. She is a director and secretary of the rebranded Northumberland Festival of the Arts and headed the programme committee in 2022.

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