David Waltner-Toews
Chris F. Westbury
|
|
Dominic
Ali www.domali.com
frequently writes about pop culture for U.S. and
Canadian media. He has worked for TIME magazine's
Canadian edition, and the CBC Radio programs As
it Happens and Definitely Not the Opera.
Dom's radio documentaries have been broadcast on
Outfront, The Sunday Edition, and Studio
360. He is currently writing a memoir about his
first newspaper job in the Caribbean. He lives in
Vancouver, Canada.
MEDIA
MADNESS: An insider's Guide to Media
illustrated by Michael Cho
Rights
sold: Canada, KidsCan Press, 2005
|
|
|
Todd
Babiak is an entertainment writer and columnist
for the Edmonton Journal. He graduated from
Montreal's Concordia University MFA program in
creative writing in 1999.
CHOKE
HOLD (237 pp) is a coming-of-age first novel
which explores the relationship between masculinity
and ritualized violence. It was nominated for the
Rogers Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction and was the
winner of the Alberta Best First Novel
Award.
Rights
sold: Canada, Turnstone Press,
2000;
Optioned
for film by Velocity Films and Jump
Communications
|
|
|
Gail Banning has been a Crown prosecutor since 1988. This is her first novel.
OUT ON A LIMB is a fresh and engaging novel for middle grade readers. Just as they're about to be evicted from their low-rent apartment, a family discovers that they're heirs to a spacious treehouse on the estate of a mysterious great-great-aunt. They move in for an idyllic summer, but trouble starts in September when 12-year-old Rosie attends a snobby new school and tries to keep her unusual home a secret.
Rights
sold: Canada, Key Porter Books, 2008
|
|
|
LEON BERGER is the author of two literary fiction novels in hard cover and 3 commercial fiction, including 2 recent thrillers. He was reviewed in Globe & Mail, La Presse and Time and featured on Book TV.
BOOK 1: THE KENNEDY IMPERATIVE: While the construction of the Berlin Wall challenges JFK with the first major crisis of his presidency, young CIA agent Philip Marsden is sent on his first mission across into East Berlin. Here he becomes a fugitive as he tries to discover the truth about his Russian-born mother who was once a double agent.
BOOK 2: THE KENNEDY MOMENTUM: The Cold War reaches its zenith with the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba threatening the US. While JFK and his brother face deep divisions in trying to diffuse the crisis, Philip Marsden is sent on a mission to Cuba where he becomes trapped, betrayed by a CIA-Mafia joint operation.
BOOK 3: THE KENNEDY REVELATION: In the immediate aftermath of the JFK assassination, Philip Marsden investigates the coincidental murder of his own Cuban-American wife. As evidence builds and the threats begin to mount, he discovers that the two deaths might not be unrelated.
RIGHTS SOLD:
World English, Open Road, 2013
|
|
|
Arthur
Black www.basicblack.com
was the popular host of CBC - Radio's Basic
Black for 19 years. His live broadcasts
filled auditoriums across Canada. He is three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.
Arthur is the author of a dozen volumes of collected humour essays, the most recent of which is LOOKING BLACKWARDS (Harbour Publishing 2012).
|
|
|
Alex
Brett alexbrett.ca
is a science writer who did field work in fisheries
and lab work prior to spending a decade at the
National Research Council. Her first two Morgan
O'Brien Castle Street Mysteries are published in
Canada by the Dundurn Group.
DEAD
WATER CREEK (360 pp) Morgan is sent west to
look into misappropriation of fisheries, research
funds, and uncovers an illicit plan to manipulate
the lucrative sockeye salmon run.
Canada,
Dundurn Group - A Castle Street Mystery,
2003
COLD
DARK MATTER a Canadian astronomer is found
hanging from the secondary mirror of one of the
world's most prestigious international telescopes,
on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This book will accurately
reflect the tight relationship between academic
astronomy and the military, particularly with
respect to France and the US.
Canada,
Dundurn Group - A Castle Street Mystery,
2005
|
|
|
Kathy
Buckworth www.kathybuckworth.com,
is a contributor to
CanadianLiving.com and Today's
Parent. She is the author of THE SECRET LIFE
OF SUPERMOM: The Tricks and Truths About Having It
All (Sourcebooks 2005), which launched a new
comic voice for busy moms. SuperMom
EveryDay, giftbook and calendar, 2006,
Sourcebooks.
JOURNEY
TO THE DARK SIDE: Supermom Goes Home The
woman who had it all (children, a busy corporate
and domestic life, a good salary and lots of guilt)
makes the transition to being at home in the
suburbs.
Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, Spring 2007
THE BLACKBERRY DIARIES. We can stay linked to a world which involves mostly us, while living in a reality of playdough, tantrums and judgement (that'd be from the other "challenged" Modern Mummies). Like children, however, all is not sunshine and roses with the BlackBerry.
Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, 2008.
SHUT UP & EAT: Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay.
Experts claim that sitting down to eat together can prevent children from getting into trouble while simultaneously creating close-knit families. In Buckworth's opinion, that's an awful lot to expect from a meatloaf! Laugh-out-loud funny, Shut Up and Eat is a must-read for any woman who's ever wondered: What the hell am I cooking tonight?
Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, Spring 2010.
|
|
|
Tanya
Chapman is a graduate of the UBC creative
writing program. Her short story, "Spring the
Chick," won This Magazine's Great Canadian
Literary Hunt. She has had two short films produced.
KING
is a coming of age story about recreating your
life—one small and honest piece at a time.
There's only one thing to do with a picture perfect
existence in the suburbs and that's to exchange it
for a trailer park, a collection of lawn
sprinklers, a liquid eyeliner addiction, and a
whole lot of burn baby burn passion.
Rights
sold: Coach House Books, Canada, fall 2006. All
other rights available.
|
|
|
Yvonne
Collins (speech writer) & Sandy
Rideout (film industry technician) www.collinsrideout.com
have been friends since they were teen-agers.
TOTALLY
ME: The Teenage Girls Survival Guide (230 pp)
is a lively and witty discussion of friendships,
boyfriends, hormones, gossip, dating, lying,
parents, stepparents, school, drugs and
alcohol.
Rights
sold: USA, Adams Media, 2000; Spain, Amat,
2001
|
|
|
Méira Cook's poetry and prose have been widely published in book form, anthologies, magazines and journals. She has received numerous awards, grants and prizes.
THE HOUSE ON SUGARBUSH ROAD, set in post-apartheid Johannesburg shortly after the 1994 democratic election of Nelson Mandela, is the story of the intertwining lives of a once prominent left-leaning liberal Afrikaner family and Beauty Mapule, their domestic servant of more than thirty years.
Rights
sold: Great Plains Publishing, 2011 for 2012 publication.
|
|
|
estate
of Sonia Craddock (1941-1997)
Sonia
was a vibrant and prolific author of children's
literature and a dynamic activist for literacy. She
earned a doctorate in education while raising three
children. Sonia's published books include: THE
SECRET OF THE CARDS, YOU CAN'T TAKE MICKY, THE
TREASURE HUNT, and TV WARS AND
ME.
HAL,
THE THIRD CLASS HERO is a very funny novel
about a hero trainee who can't quite make the
grade. HarperCollins Canada sold 5,000
copies.
Rights
have reverted.
ROSEMARY
FOR REMEMBRANCE (132 pp) When Rosy's
grandmother keeps vanishing she enlists the help of
her unusual family members to solve the puzzle in
this funny and off-beat mystery. This middle-grade
novel is a popular resource guide for Alzheimer's
families.
Rights
sold: Canada, James Lorimer & Company,
1996, Republished Streetlights, 2008
SLEEPING
BOY, a picture book, illustrated by Leonid Gore
(32 pp) A remarkable modern, allegorical re-telling
of the Sleeping Beauty tale, set against the
backdrop of the Berlin Wall.
Rights
sold: USA, Atheneum, a division of Simon &
Schuster, 1999
|
|
|
Dede
Crane is a former ballerina who has recently
turned to writing. Several of her short stories
have been accepted for publication in literary
magazines.
SYMPATHY
a literary novel framed within Dr. Michael Myatt's
sympathy-based therapy. The book makes us
reconsider the relationship between mind and body
and just how permeable the boundaries between self
and other are as we follow a cast of broken
characters on their poignant, often humorous
journeys inside and outside the the Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder wing of Rosewood Clinic. As Michael
works to uncover the startling cause of patient and
former ballet dancer, Kerry Taylor's catatonia, he
will discover his own vulnerability and a family
secret long repressed.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast, 2006
THE 25 PAINS OF KENNEDY BAINES is a teen novel, in which a Jane
Austen-loving high school girl and her friends
experience a summer of firsts in which everything
seems to be changing, including a Mom who smokes
dope to cope while Dad is away. A modern day
Pride and Prejudice.
Rights
sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2006
Rights to both books will revert in 2008 due to discontinuation of Raincoast's publishing program.
|
|
|
Wilfred
Cude www.phdtrap.com
wrote a monograph in 1987, recounting the problems
which he and many others endured in their quest to
complete graduate studies. The paper expanded and
became something of an underground success. Now he
has written a fully revised and updated
book
THE
PH.D. TRAP REVISITED (333 pp) is a
fascinating expose of university graduate schools'
savage exploitation and obstacles to intellectual
inquiry and careers.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2001
|
|
|
Kelli
Deeth is a 1998 graduate of UBC's MFA program
in creative writing where she received a fellowship
and an award for her one-act play. Her short
fiction has been published in Dalhousie Review
and The Antigonish Review.
THE
GIRL WITHOUT ANYONE (166 pp) is a dazzling
debut collection of linked stories about Leah, the
girl without anyone, full of funny and poignant
insecurities, struggling to grow up in the
suburbs.
Right
sold: Canada, HarperCollins, 2001; Denmark,
Gylndenal, 2002
THE
OTHER SIDE OF YOUTH a collection of stories, is a meditation on the nature of love within couples and families. The characters, searching for connection, permanence, and certainty, discover that life is full complex choices, upsets and unexpected disappointments.
Right
sold: Canada, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013
|
|
|
Norma
Dixon has been writing for children for many
years, with articles in such publications as
Ranger Rick and books, including WALTER
THE PIGEON and JUST RIGHT FOR
CATS.
THE
LOWDOWN ON EARTHWORMS (2004), FLIES
(2005), SEASHELL SECRETS (2004)
Rights
sold: Canada, Fitzhenry & Whiteside
|
|
|
Leah Douglas is a new mother and an avid gourmet. She holds a Ph.D. in social work from McGill University, and she teaches at University of the Fraser Valley. She has worked in health care for many years and is happy to combine her passions for delicious food, healthy living and family life.
The Gourmet Pregnancy is a lighthearted cookbook filled with chic recipes, beautiful photos and inspirational narratives about cooking and entertaining throughout pregnancy. It is a celebration of pregnancy and women's bodies, with a positive focus on food, eating and socializing. It encourages women to take pleasure in their pregnancy and promotes diverse and healthy food options.
Rights
sold: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.
|
|
|
kc dyer (www.kcdyer.com) has published four novels for young adults (Dundurn) and a new series with Doubleday.
A WALK THROUGH THE WINDOW. Darby Christopher is stuck in a one-lobster town for the summer with a pair of weird grandparents and not much to do. Then Darby meets mysterious Gabe and walks with through the stone window of an old ruin she finds herself in another world. Darby observes the stories of different families as they made their way to Canada - via the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato famine; and the Bering land bridge into North America.
Book 2: FACING FIRE. Vignettes in this book tell the stories of West Coast First Nations, Chinese railroad experience and the gold rush in Barkerville.
Rights
sold: Canada, Doubleday Canada, 2008
|
|
|
M.
A. C. (Marion) Farrant is the acclaimed author of over a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. Her writing has been widely anthologized in North America, has been dramatized for television and serialized for CBC radio. Her stage play, My Turquoise Years, premiers with the Arts Club Theatre of Vancouver, B.C., April 4 - May 4, 2013.
DARWIN
ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE, is "an antidote
to the stranglehold the corporate media has on the
public's imagination, and is a place where
uncontaminated thought can still be found." (Talon Books, 2003)
MY
TURQUOISE YEARS Marion's memoir of
growing up as a motherless child nurtured by an
opinionated aunt, and a small involved family who
all try to fathom her selfish spendthrift
mother (Canada and US, Greystone Books, 2004).
THE SECRET LIVES OF LITTERBUGS. "These twenty essays in the tradition of David Sedaris are funny, sharp, and completely original while describing an utterly familiar world. They include stories about Farrant's childhood, her parenthood, and her writing life; parallels emerge bringing a strong cohesiveness to the collection." Ebook available here
Rights
sold: Canada, Key Porter, 2008
DOWN THE ROAD TO ETERNITY--NEW AND SELECTED FICTION. (Talon Books, 2009)
The Strange Truth about Us (Talon Books, 2011).
The World Afloat: One Hundred Miniature Stories (Talonbooks, for 2014 publication).
|
|
|
MEG FEDERICO regularly writes humor for the National Post. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Shambhala Sun, and Agni Journal (Boston University Press). She also writes commentary for CBC Radio (which she often performs). For several years, she wrote a highly successful column, "Transitions: Issues in Caregiving," for The Halifax Daily News.
WELCOME TO THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE is a laugh out loud travelogue of the author's two-year tour of duty as manager of her wealthy parents' homecare in suburban New York-from her home in Nova Scotia, a thousand miles away. When the author's eighty year old mother and newly minted step-father were finally forced to accept full-time home care, Federico imagined them settling into a Norman-Rockwellian life of docile dependency but contrary to expectations, her parents turned into terrible teens in a world where gravity didn't apply.
Rights sold: World rights to Random House USA. Canadian publication by Doubleday Canada. Italian rights to Sperling Kupfer and stage rights sold to producers Jean Cheever and Tom Polum.
For all territories contact: dcronin@randomhouse.com
|
|
|
Will
Ferguson www.willferguson.ca
has been a regular columnist for Maclean's
Magazine and a frequent contributor to
Flare, Globe and Mail and other
publications. He is a popular humourist, chronicler
of Canadian history, politics, and pop culture and
winner of the 2005 Pierre Berton Award for
Popularizing Canadian History.
His published books
include Beauty
Tips From Moose Jaw (Knopf Canada), I
Was a Teenage Katima-Victim (Douglas & McIntyre,
1998), Canadian
History For Dummies (Wiley), Bastards
and Boneheads (Douglas &
McIntyre, 1999), Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan (Tuttle
1998), and Hokkaido
Highway Blues (published in Canada and China as
HITCHING RIDES WITH BUDDHA) an insightful
and witty travel memoir. He is a co-author of Girlfriend's
Guide to Hockey with Teena Dickerson and Bruce Spencer (Key Porter, 1999, new edition 2008) and the editor of THE
Penguin Book of Canadian Humour (Penguin Canada, 2006).
SPANISH FLY is the story of young Jack McGreary who has been raised in the dying town of Paradise Flats during the the dust storms of the Great Depression. Jack has been forced to live by his wits and when a pair a fast-talking con artists blows through town, Jack falls in with them. Together, they go on a crime spree across the American Southwest, staging a number of inventive and often hilarious cons.
Rights sold to Penguin Canada (Canadian English), Publication Fall 2007 & paperback September 2008, Keter Books (Israel), Planeta (Spain),
ASA (Portugal), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Harvill Secker (UK), Vintage paperback as Hustle (UK), Muza (Poland).
WHY
I HATE CANADIANS (220 pp), Canada, Douglas
& McIntyre, 1997, Re-issued 2007
HOW
TO BE A CANADIAN (even if you already are one)
with Ian Ferguson (225 pp), Won the CBA Libris
Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Nominated
for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the
Bill Duthie, BC Booksellers' Choice Prize. 175,000
cc sold. Canada, Douglas & McIntyre,
2001, 2007.
HAPPINESS™
is a satirical novel about a self-help book
that works. Winner of the Stephen
Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the Canadian
Authors Association Fiction Prize. Shortlisted for
the Commonwealth Region Prize
(Canada/Caribbean)
Rights
sold: Canada, Penguin, 2001 (first published under
the title, GENERICA); Audio,
Canada, Goose Lane and sold in over twenty other territories.
|
|
|
LAINE FERNDALE teaches literature and writing to pay for a fairly serious chai latte habit. She lives with her husband and her adorably needy cat. Find her at LaineFerndale.com, on Facebook and on Twitter @laineferndale.
THE SCANDALOUS MRS. WILSON is a sparkling western romance from a promising debut talent whisks readers away to the bustling Candian frontier town of Fraser Springs in the early 1900s.
Jo Wilson has seen her share of tragedy, but she’s determined to keep her late husband’s bathhouse afloat, even if her all-female staff raises eyebrows. She’s holding her own against the Fraser Springs society ladies’ public scorn, but a handsome new customer poses a different threat.
Bored with writing adventure novels, author Owen Sterling arrives in the tiny Canadian town hoping to launch a serious journalism career with an exposé on the titillating rumors swirling around Wilson’s Bathhouse. But the beguiling Jo is honest and upright and her respectable business is not at all what he expected.
Book One in the Fraser Springs series.
Rights
sold: World, Crimson Romance (S&S), 2017.
THE INFAMOUS MISS ILSA, in which a woman escapes a difficult life in Vancouver for a fresh start in Fraser Springs and now, as the right-hand woman at Wilson's Bathhouse, has left all traces of her old life behind her. But then a new doctor, whose family once employed her as a housemaid, comes to town and complications arise.
Books two in the Fraser Springs Series.
Rights
sold: World, Crimson Romance (S&S), 2017.
Books three and four in the series, THE WAYWARD MISS WHEELER and THE SHOCKING MISS MCSHEEN, are forthcoming.
|
|
|
Mark
Frutkin www.markfrutkin.com
is the author of six books of fiction and three of
poetry. His work has been published in Canada, UK,
US, Holland, and India.
In A MESSAGE FOR THE EMPEROR, Li Wen is on a journey to paint four landscapes, during the year it will take him to travel across southern China to the Song Dynasty Emperor's Court. Seven hundred years later, David McAdams, Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, rediscovers the lost paintings and begins to retrace the artist's journey. Unaware that one of the paintings depicts a map to an ancient tomb filled with gold and jade artefacts, the curator draws the attention of a Chinese triad gang.
Rights
sold: Canada, Vehicule Press, for 2012 publication.
FABRIZIO'S
RETURN is a literary novel set in the 17th and
18th-century Italy, in which the Devil's Advocate,
a hard-eyed Jesuit, investigates a candidate for
sainthood. FABRIZIO'S RETURN is described by Alan
Cumyn as "a grand novel full of ossuaries and
telescopes, gargoyles and magic potions,
apocalyptic paintings, angels, comets, violins, of
murmurations of starlings and characters -- such
characters! -- to make you fall in
love."
Winner of the 2007 Trillium Book Award.
Nominated for the 2007 Sunburst Award.
Nominated for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Caribbean/Canada).
Produced as an opera by St. Olaf College in Minnesota
Rights
sold: Knopf Canada (h/c) 2006, Vintage Canada (p/b)
2007; Proszynski, Poland; Inostranka, Russia; Narae, Korea; Editorial ViaMagna, Spain; French language Rights to Alto.
|
|
|
Pam
Freir has been writing a weekly food column,
Pleasures of the Table, for seven
years.
LAUGHING
WITH MY MOUTH FULL: Tales from a Gulf Islands
Kitchen, a gently comic narrative of the
author's adventures eating and preparing food at
her gulf island home and while
travelling.
Rights
sold: HarperCollins Canada, 2005
Winner: Best Special Interest Food and Beverage Book, Canadian Culinary Book Awards
|
|
|
Steven
Galloway www.stevengalloway.com
is a young rising star. A 1999 graduate of
UBC's MFA program, he has studied radio drama and
screenwriting. He is a sessional instructor in
creative writing.
ASCENSION
(279 pp) a dazzling international novel about the
world of a Romany high wire walker.
Rights
sold: Canada, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003; Radio,
serialization, CBC; Greece, Livanis; US, Carroll
& Graf (reverted); Poland, Bertelsman Swiat; Denmark,
Cicero (reverted); Italy, Edizionieo; Australia, Text Media;
Turkey, Kariyer Yayinlari, world Spanish rights to
El Aleneo (Argentina); UK, Atlantic; Munhakdongne Publishing, South Korea; Editora Rocco, Brazil.
|
|
|
Bill
Gaston is a former hockey player and graduate
of UBC's MFA program. He teaches writing at the
University of Victoria. Bill is a past winner of
numerous awards, including the 2003 inaugural
Timothy Findley Lifetime Achievement Award. His
short stories have been widely published in
literary journals, including Granta. Bill's
published works of fiction include: TALL
LIVES, a novel; DEEP COVE STORIES, a
collection, as well as BELLA COMBE JOURNAL
and NORTH OF JESUS BEANS. His backlist has
recently been acquired by Raincoast
Books.
MIDNIGHT
HOCKEY, a satiric look at beer-league
hockey
Rights
sold: Canada, Doubleday Canada, fall
2006
THE
GOOD BODY an aging hockey player who failed to
make the major leagues goes home in a futile and
funny attempt to reconnect with the son he left
behind.
Rights
sold: Canada, Stoddart/Cormorant 2000, Raincoast
Books 2004; US, Regan Books 2001
SEX
IS RED an award winning collection, one of
which won the $10,000 CBC Prize for
Fiction.
Rights
Sold: Canada, Cormorant 1998
MT.
APPETITE a collection OF 12 stories (221 pp)
linked by the common theme of yearning and seeking
in "unpredictable and addictive fiction by a writer
of wit, skill and power." MT. APPETITE was
short-listed for the 2002 Giller Prize.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2002; French
language, Les Editions de la Pleine Lune,
2003
THE
CAMERAMAN (356 pp), is a new edition of a novel
first published in 1994, as one of the last books
of fiction from Macmillan. The plot revolves around
the on-camera death of an actress. This has
implications for her friends -- a director and a
cameraman.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2003; French
language, Les Editions de la Pleine Lune, 2003;
Poland, Wydawniczy
SOINTULA
is a quest novel in which a middle-aged woman
leaves her husband, who is a former Mormon
missionary and the mayor of their Ontario town. She
paddles up the west coast in a stolen kayak,
looking for her son.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2004. Optioned for film by Gumboot Productions.
Rights for all Raincoast titles will revert 2008.
|
|
|
Katherine
Gibson's www.katherinegibson.com
articles have appeared in Reader's
Digest (U.S., Canada, and Australia),
Homemaker's Magazine, Toronto Star, Globe and
Mail, Northwest Palate, Seattle Times, Airlines,
Via, and Victoria Times Colonist. Formerly the owner of a public relations
business, Katherine is an experienced publicist,
public speaker, and seminar presenter.
UNCLUTTER
YOUR LIFE: Transforming Your Physical, Mental
and Emotional Space. UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE
exposes the clutter we see -- a messy desk,
junk under the bed, stuff in closets or jammed in
the attic -- while expanding the notion of clutter
to include unseen obstacles that pack the mental
and emotional in-basket of life. The author reveals
how a calm, beautiful, or spiritually-enhancing
environment fosters a productive and joyful life.
Rights
sold: Beyond Words, Inc. US, 2004. Rights have also
been sold for Korea, Japan, Germany, India, French Canada, Turkey and
Indonesia.
PAUSE:
Putting the Brakes on a Runaway Life
puts the hurried life on notice. Rather than analyze the chaos that churns within our complex society, Pause will convince you that life dramatically improves when we replace meaningless activities, back-to-back commitments, and unfulfilling obligations with all that gives life zest.
Through sparkling anecdotes and solid research, Katherine Gibson calms our physical, emotional and spiritual angst with practical and inspirational down-home wisdom.
Rights
sold: Insomniac Press, Canada, fall
2006
|
|
|
Leona
Gom is the award-winning author of eleven
published books of poetry and fiction, including
ZERO AVENUE, HOUSEBROKEN, THE Y
CHROMOSONE and three Vikki Bauer
mysteries. Leona won the CAA Award and was
shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her novel
HOUSEBROKEN was awarded the Ethel Wilson
Prize for Fiction. She has also had two full-length
radio plays, produced by CBC.
THE Y CHROMOSOME Prize-winning novelist and poet Leona Gom challenges the reader to meet an all-women society of the future. Taut and gripping, The Y Chromosome examines the
relations and value system of a culture of women where the few men still alive are in hiding, socialized early in life to regard themselves as inferior. This futurist
society abhors its ancestry, a male-dominated world where violence was commonplace. Avoiding caricatures and easy answers, this novel is an ironic and provocative
novel that probes women’s and men’s lives in a society that, despite striking differences, bears many similarities to our world today.
Rights Sold: Cormorant Books, Canada, 2018. Optioned for film by Mind
Creatures Entertainment. Originally published by Second Story Press.
HATING
GLADYS (272 pp) is a darkly funny literary
novel set in a remote Yukon Lodge in the early
1960s, where two teenage girls work all summer to
earn their university tuition. The ill-treatment
the girls receive at the hands of evil Gladys and
her husband are recalled when they're re-united in
the city 35 years later.
Rights
sold: Canada, Sumach Press, 2002
|
|
|
Andrew
Gray is a 1996 UBC MFA grad, with an impressive
list of awards and poetry and fiction publication
credits. A web site designer and arts program
coordinator, he is at work on a novel involving art
and WW II.
SMALL
ACCIDENTS a collection of 12 stories (198 pp)
brought favourable reviews from The Globe and
Mail, Publishers' Weekly, and the New York
Times Book Review. SMALL ACCIDENTS was
nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and
the IPPY Award for short fiction.
Rights
sold: Canada Raincoast Books, 2001. Rights have reverted.
|
|
|
Taras
Grescoe is a young travel writer of
extraordinary talent who has contributed to
National Geographic Travelle, enRoute, New York
Times and many others.
SACRE
BLUES: an Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec
(304 pp) won fans and favourable reviews, as well
as the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction
and the Quebec Writers' Federation awards of the
Mavis Gallant Prize for non-fiction, and Best First
Book Prize.
Rights
sold: Canada (English) Macfarlane, Walter &
Ross, 2000; French VLB editeur, 2002
THE
END OF ELSEWHERE: Travels Among the Tourists
(309 pp) is an on-the-road odyssey and a
brilliant history of tourism. It has been
short-listed for the Mavis Gallant Prize for
non-fiction.
Rights
sold: Canada, Macfarlane Walter & Ross (now
McClelland & Stewart) 2003, UK & US rights
to Serpent's Tail, French Language rights to
VLB.
|
|
|
Paul
Grescoe & Audrey Grescoe are veteran
editors, journalists and authors of books on
business, trees, and cruise ship travel.
THE
BOOK OF LETTERS: 150 Years of Private Canadian
Correspondence, has won rave reviews
and is a popular gift book.
Macfarlane,
Walter & Ross (now McClelland & Stewart)
2002
THE
BOOK OF WAR LETTERS: a Century of Private Canadian
Correspondence (McClelland & Stewart,
2003);
THE
BOOK OF LOVE LETTERS: Canadian Kinship, Friendship
and Romance (McClelland & Stewart,
February 2005)
FLIGHT
PATH: How Westjet is Flying High by Paul
Grescoe (Canada, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2004)
NORTHERN TIGERS:
Building Ethical Canadian Corporate Champions, A Memoir and a Manifesto by Dick Haskyne
With Paul Grescoe (Canada, Key Porter,
2007)
|
|
|
Cameron
Gunn (www.camerongunn.ca)
is a lawyer, prosecutor and writer living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is decidedly unqualified to write a book on virtue. That, however, is precisely what qualifies him to follow Franklin. As a prosecutor, the Author is faced with daily ethical dilemmas and as a husband and father he is required to constantly grapple with the quandary of trying to lead a virtuous life as an example to his children. Who could have a greater need for a course dedicated to moral perfection?
Attorney, dad, and wife-described sloth Cameron Gunn's BEN & ME, relates his humbling and often hilarious attempt to live by each of Benjamin Franklin's thirteen virtues one week at a time, from Temperance and Chastity to Sincerity, Silence, and Moderation, with Humility and a few others thrown in for good measure.
BEN & ME: From Temperance to Humility--Stumbling Through Ben Franklin's Thirteen Virtues, One Unvirtuous Day at a Time is the chronicle of one man's attempt to take up Franklin's challenge, overcome the crushing burden of mediocrity, and stumble in the path of greatness. As he chronicles his successes and failures, the author examines the motivation behind his own journey and western society's seemingly insatiable appetite for self-improvement schemes.
Rights
sold: World to Perigee (Penguin USA), publication 2010. Complex Chinese rights sold to Rye Field, Korean rights to Book 21.
|
|
|
Genni
Gunn www.gennigunn.com
was born in Trieste, Italy. Before turning to
writing full-time, she toured in rock bands (bass
guitar, piano, vocals). Her opera libretto,
"Alternate Visions," was staged in 2004.
A creative writing instructor, she is also a
translator of the works of Italian poet Dacia
Maraini. Genni's THRICE UPON A TIME won the
1990 Commonwealth Prize for the best First Novel
(Canada/Caribbean division). MATING IN
CAPTIVITY won the Gerald Lampert Prize for
Poetry. She is also the author of TRAVELLING IN
THE GAIT OF A FOX and ON THE
ROAD.
TRACING
IRIS is a complex and exciting
literary novel in which a social anthropologist
searches for her mother.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2001 (rights reverted); optioned for
film, 2007 (film in post-production); Felici, Italy, audio to audible.
HUNGERS
is a mesmerizing collection about
yearning, vice and the dark side of
love.
Rights
sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2002 (rights reverted).
ALTERNATE VISIONS: an opera libretto half in French and half in English. Spring 2007
FACELESS
a new poetry collection explores landscapes that are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced.
Rights
sold: Canada, Signature Editions, 2007
In SOLITARIA,
a family discovers that Vito, the brother they thought living in South America, is actually dead, and has been for years. And, even stranger, their sister has been pretending to receive letters from him for decades. Set in southern Italy in 2002, and spanning two decades, Solitaria is a journey through loss, deception, memory and desire. Buy the e-book.
Rights sold: Canada, Signature Editions, 2010; Felici, Italy; Artemis, Netherlands; audio to audible.com.
Longlisted for the Giller Prize.
TRACKS: Journeys in Time and Place. Tracks is a compilation of personal travel essays that range across three continents, from Italy, where Genni Gunn was born and spent her early years, to Canada and Mexico, and through Asia, where she has travelled many times, both reconnecting with her sister and witnessing the emergence of new political realities in Myanmar.
Rights
sold: Canada, Signature Editions, 2013
|
|
|
Mike
Harcourt served as British Columbia's Premier
from 1991 to 1996, and as Mayor of Vancouver, three
terms from 1980 to 1986. Mr. Harcourt is Chair of
the International Centre for Sustainable Cities,
Senior Associate of the Liu Centre (UBC) for the
Studies of Global Issues. He works at the Rick
Hansen Man in Motion Foundation on International
Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (I-CORD) and
chairs the Spinal Cord Injury Quality of Life
Advisory Group. He speaks and advises
internationally on sustainability solutions. In
November 1996 he was appointed by the Prime
Minister to the National Round Table on the
Environment and the Economy where he serves on the
Executive Committee and Chairs the Urban
Sustainability Program. In May of 2003, he was
appointed Federal Commissioner on The B.C. Treaty
Commission. December 2003, he was appointed by
Prime Minister Paul Martin to Chair an advisory
committee on cities.
He
is the author, with John Lekich, of MIKE
HARCOURT'S PLAN B: ONE MAN'S JOURNEY FROM
TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH
Rights
sold: North American, John Wiley & Son, Ltd.
Fall 2004
|
|
|
The influence of Hannah Holborn's various parents—foster and otherwise—has lent her fiction a unique blend of British humour, Slavic melancholy, naturalism, and First Nations sensibility. Her prize winning stories have appeared in numerous journals including "Room of One's Own" and "Front and Centre". She is writing a novel in Gibsons, British Columbia.
FIERCE: With an irresistible combination of playfulness and empathy, these effervescent, sometimes heartbreaking tales of underachieving adults, unfairly burdened children, and the unaccountably hopeful of all ages explore the moments of grace in lives that are too often defined by loss.
"The Indian Act" is a compact coming-of-age story, charting the journey of a boy who, though bounced through many foster homes, holds on to the dream of love and unconditional acceptance; and in the novella "River Rising," three generations in a small town struggle toward joy despite the accidents of fate and the foolish mistakes that almost, but not quite, derail their lives.
RIGHTS SOLD:
Canada, McClelland & Stewart, 2007 (publication 2009); Italy, Elliot Edizioni.
|
|
|
Aislinn
Hunter www.aislinnhunter.com
is a personable Vancouver-based teacher of creative
writing, with a wealth of experience in arts
broadcasting. Her poetry and fiction reflect her
fascination with Ireland.
WHAT'S
LEFT US a collection of six stories and a
novella was nominated for the Danuta Gleed
Award and received the 2003 Foreword
Magazine Silver Medal for Fiction. The book was
also shortlisted for the Re-Lit prizes.
Rights
sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2001 (reverted); French language
for the novella Les Allusifs, 2004; Finland,
Karisto Oy 2001
STAY
, a dazzling first literary novel in
which a young Canadian woman has a love affair with
an older disgraced Irish academic, was shortlisted
for the Books in Canada/Amazon.ca Best First Novel
Prize.
Rights
sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2002 (rights reverted); UK/Irish
rights, New Island Press, 2003; Film produced by Amerique Films in Ireland, starring Aiden Quinn and Taylor Schilling for release in 2013.
INTO
THE EARLY HOURS a poetry collection, won the
Gerald Lampert Award and was shortlisted for the
Dorothy Livesay Award. (Polestar Books, 2001, reverted) THE
POSSIBLE PAST a poetry collection of great
poise and insight, looks at actual historical
events and people through a post-modern lens.
Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay and Pat Lowther
Prizes for Poetry. (Polestar Books, 2004, reverted)
|
|
|
Ann
Ireland is a widely traveled writing instructor
and past president of Pen Canada.
EXILE
(298 pp) is a smart and sly novel in which Carlos,
a Latin American dissident poet is "rescued" by a
group of Canadian idealists. For Carlos, a spoiled
Latino, his refugee status is a new kind of
imprisonment. Shortlisted for the
Governor-General's Award for Fiction and the
Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction.
Rights
sold: Canada, The Dundurn Group,
2002
THE
INSTRUCTOR (208 pp) probes the nature of power
shifts between man and woman, teacher and student,
when a young woman goes to Mexico with her art
instructor. Short-listed for for the Trillium Book
Award. Published: Canada, Doubleday, 1996; US, Ecco
Press, 1997.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2004
A
CERTAIN MR. TAKAHASHI (206 pp) When pianist
Yoshi Takahshi moves next door to adolescent
sisters, Jean and Colette, infatuation and sexual
tensions threaten the balance of their lives.
Winner of the 1985 Seal/Bantam First Novel Award.
The 1991 feature film The Pianist, directed
by Claude Gagnon, was based on this novel.
Published: Canada, McClelland & Stewart; US,
Vanguard; UK, Bantam.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2005
|
|
|
Olive
Skene Johnson, PhD. is a neuro-psychologist.
She has contributed articles on sexuality to
Canadian and American periodicals.
THE
SEXUAL SPECTRUM: Exploring Human Diversity (253
pp) is a fascinating and highly accessible look at
the myriad factors that shape human sexuality. The
author draws on scientific findings, psychological
quizzes, anecdotes, clinical and personal
experiences.
Rights
sold: UK, Aus/NZ (Fusion, Vision paperbacks 2003)
Canada, Raincoast Books, 2004, Revised edition 2007
|
|
|
Pamela Klaffke www.pamelaklaffke.comis a former newspaper and magazine journalist who now works as a novelist and photographer. She is the author of two novels and the non-fiction book, Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping (2003). She also writes My Analogue Life, a weekly column that appears in the Analogue Lifestyle section of Lomography Magazine.
Her dreamy, vintage-inspired photographs are shot exclusively with analogue cameras using expired and/or damaged film. Her work has appeared in art publications and advertisements around the globe and prints of her work reside in private collections worldwide. Pamela is also the founder and chief curator of the Secret Society of Analogue Art, an organization that encourages the creative fusion of analogue and digital communication and media by offering an ongoing series of participatory art projects.
SNAPPED! Sara B. is having a meltdown. She's teetering on the edge of forty and struggling to maintain her persona as Montreal's premier trend-spotter. Snapped! careens through Sara's world as she drinks, smokes, stirs up social melodrama, and becomes increasingly unhinged.
Rights
sold: World, Mira Books, publish date 2010.
EVERY LITTLE THING
If it's not one thing, it's her mother
Britt, San Francisco's brassy scandal queen, filled her newspaper column with juicy details of her many marriages, cosmetic surgeries and everything about her only daughter, Mason.
Then Britt dies. So Mason-now thirty-five and vehemently un-Britt-like in every way returns home to settle her affairs...though some affairs are not so easy to settle.
Mason finds herself thrust back into the spotlight, and this time it's her own doing.
Rights
sold: World, Mira Books, publish date 2011.
HELLO CUTIE! Adventures in Cute Culture, which looks at the history of cute culture
from a pop-culture perspective covering everything from scented Strawberry Shortcake
dolls and Hello Kitty, to the history of the teddy bear and the current boom in kitsch crafting.
Rights sold: World, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012.
|
|
|
Carole Lazar (www.carolelazar.com) practised law for ten years and then was a provincial court judge from 1989 until 2008. This is her first novel.
LUCY UNSTRUNG: What do you do when your mom suddenly decides to abandon her responsibilities and make up for all the fun she missed when she was a teenager? That is the dilemma 13 year old Lucy faces. Convinced that her grandma, God and the Catholic Church are on her side, Lucy tries to make her mother see the error of her ways. When her efforts are unsuccessful, Lucy is faced the loss of her family, her home, her school and perhaps even her best friend. As she struggles to preserve what she can of her past life she finds that while Grandma, God and her church are still there for her, these are problems she has to solve for herself.
Rights
sold: Canada, Tundra, 2009.
|
| 
| John Lekich is a freelance journalist, screenwriter, and film critic. He has a B.Ed. from UBC, and taught high school English and drama until writing took over his life. He is the co-author of MIKE HARCOURT'S PLAN B: ONE MAN'S JOURNEY FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH. THE LOSERS' CLUB (247 pp), a young adult novel for anyone who has ever been bullied, was a finalist for: Governor General's Award, Book of the Year (Foreward Magazine), White Pine, BC Book Prize's Sheila A. Egoff Award, Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, Canadian Library Association - Young Adult Canadian Book Award, Best Books for Young Adults Award. Rights sold: Canada, Annick Press, 2002; UK, Macmillan Young Picador, 2004; France, Bayard Jeuness, 2004, Italy, Mondadori REEL ADVENTURES: The Savvy Teen's Guide to Great Movies (170 pp), is a highly-recommended resource. Rights sold: Canada, Annick Press, 2002 KING OF THE LOST & FOUND is a young adult novel with heart and humour in which 15-year-old Raymond endures the teasing which comes from his mysterious fainting spells. The only bright spot in Raymond's life is in running the Lost & Found in the school basement. When the principal decides to close the operation, Raymond turns to devious and entrereneurial activities. Rights sold: North America, Raincoast Books, 2007 PRISONER OF SNOWFLAKE FALLS centers around the misadventures of a resourceful fifteen-year-old thief named Henry Thelonius Holloway. Henry tends to commit random acts of kindness during break-ins but when when he gets caught in the act he is sent to the titular small town, where he discovers the true meaning of family and friendship. Rights sold: World right to Orca Books for spring 2012. |
| 
| Andrea MacPherson www.andreamacpherson.com is a UBC MFA graduate. Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines. She is a past editor of Prism International. She teaches Creative Writing and English with University College of the Fraser Valley, and has taught at Malaspina University College, Douglas College and SFU's Writing & Publishing Program. BEYOND THE BLUE spans the years 1879-1918 in Dundee, Scotland, as the lives of Morag, her two daughers and a fey young niece, echo seminal events of their times -- the Tay Bridge disaster, WW I, the suffragette movement, the Easter Uprising, and the influenza scourge. Morag, a worker in the Bowbridge Jute Mill tries to keep her family intact.
"Beyond the Blue holds a compelling and important story of First Word War Scotland, a time when women redefined the word hope as the world was losing its innocence. Andrea MacPherson writes beautifully, balancing the lives of her characters between history and the poetry of gesture, secrets and love."
-- Ami McKay, author of The Birth House Rights sold: Random House Canada, spring 2007 WHAT WE ONCE BELIEVED captures those changing times when hippies and peace activists, especially women were breaking free of old expectations and limitations. Adolescent Maybe, living with her grandmother on sleepy Lear Street in Oak Bay comes of age during a sultry summer when her birth mother, Camille, reappears. She's written The Other Mother, a best-selling memoir about motherhood and Women's Liberation, which gives only passing reference to Maybe's existence.
Nomiated for the BC Book Prize. Rights sold: Canada, Caitlin Press, 2016. WHEN SHE WAS ELECTRIC (251 pp) is an intensely passionate first novel which takes place on a small BC farm during the heat wave of 1939. Three generations of women and the neighbouring Indians mix echoes of the past, secrets, and the impending threat of war. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2003
Voted Number 6 on CBC Canada Reads: People's Choice. Rights reverted. |
|
|
Helen
McLean is an acclaimed artist and
memoirist.
SIGNIFICANT
THINGS (260 pp) is a richly-textured literary
novel in which Edward lives an intimate and
impoverished childhood with his feckless mother in
Toronto, until her marriage to a rich manufacturer
takes them to London, where his life of loneliness
begins. Unable to distinguish between loving and
owning, he fills the void with art and antiquities.
Short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
for Best Book (Canada/Caribbean region).
Rights
sold: Canada, Simon & Pierre,
2003
|
| 
| Maria Coletta McLean www.mariacoletta.com is a Canadian-born writer of Italian ancestory. She collected and contributed to MAMA MIA! Good Italian Girls Talk Back (ECW, 2004). MY FATHER CAME FROM ITALY (176 pp) is a daughter's loving account of reclaiming her aged father's dignity by returning to his home village of Supino. Read the e-book. Rights sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2000. Rights have reverted. Summers in Supino: Becoming Italian is a sequel, with more village life in Supino. Rights sold: Canada, ECW Press, 2012. |
|
|
Teresa
McWhirter www.teresamcwhirter.com has a BA in creative writing from the
University of Victoria. Her gritty, articles and
short fictions have been published in Geist,
Smoking Lung, Bust, The Nerve, sub-Terrain, Sassy,
Filling Station and Vice.
SOME
GIRLS DO is a rare kind of novel: a
"genuinely revelatory portrait of a generation and
an alternative community rarely described in
fiction. In sharp and ragged prose, Teresa, unlocks
the sub-culture of the young and poor,
almost-adults in a chaotic urban
setting.
Rights
sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2002. Rights will revert in 2008 due to discontinuation of Raincoast's publishing program.
DIRTBAGS is a coming-of-age novel about Spider, a girl with a messy life on the fringe, who likes to shoplift expensive cheese. McWhirter creates a cast of eccentric and compelling characters and produces a fresh, vibrant voice with a unique take on the world.
Rights
sold: Canada, Anvil Press, 2007
|
|
|
James
McWilliams & R. James Steel
(pictured at right, top) have both written military
histories as well as co-authoring THE SUICIDE
BATTALION (WW I).
AMIENS:
THE DAWN OF VICTORY (250 pp, 30 illustrations)
is the first study of this historic and decisive
battle of WW I, in France. Long ago, the authors
interviewed survivors and their families and
acquired first-hand accounts of the
event.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn, 2001; UK, Tempus,
2003
GAS!
THE BATTLES FOR YPRES, 1915 ( 243 pp).
Published by in Canada by Vanwell in 1985, rights
have now reverted.
|
|
|
Marg
Meikle
is the Queen of Trivia and a West Coast author of
six books for adults. She has written several
Question & Answer books for kids.
FUNNY
YOU SHOULD ASK (Scholastic Books,
1998)
YOU
ASKED FOR IT! (Scholastic Books,
2000)
ASK
ME ANYTHING! (Scholastic Books,
2004)
Rights
for various titles have been sold to the U.S.,
Croatia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Lithuania and Korea. They are out in a collected work, How Much Does Your Head Weigh? (Scholastic 2010)
|
|
|
The late Eric
Nicol the grand old man of Canadian humour, was
the author of 36 books, radio plays, stage plays
and television musicals. He is a three time winner
of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. He has
received the Order of Canada, the UBC Alumni Merit
Award, and the BC Gas Lifetime Achievement
Award.
SCRIPT TEASE: A Wordsmith's Waxings on Life & Writing.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2010
CANADIAN
POLITICS UNPLUGGED illustrated by Peter
Whalley, with Introduction by Stuart MacLean, is
classic Nicol nonsense.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2003; Doubleday
Book-of-the-Month Club
OLD
IS IN: Baby Boomers' Guide to Aging
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2004
|
|
|
Noreen
Olson is a popular Alberta farmer, marriage
commissioner and public speaker. Her six books of
essays have been best-sellers for many
years.
THE
SCHOOL BUS DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE: Essays of
Family, Community and Transitions with
introduction by Will Ferguson
Rights
sold: Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, 2004
|
|
|
LISA PASOLD (www.lisapasold.com) is a freelance journalist and Paris-based tour guide who writes about travel, architecture and culture. She has two books of poetry published by Frontenac House. She also explores North America in her 1967 Buick Skylark.
RATS OF LAS VEGAS is a confident novel about Millard Lacouvy, an unusual young woman whose quick hands and flair for poker take her from Depression-Era Vancouver to the post-war mob town of Las Vegas. Millard is a kid playing for dimes at the local saloon and washing laundry at the Hotel Vancouver when an offer from an accomplished gambler sets her star rising. From rags to riches, her life is haunted by childhood friend and sometimes lover Teddy Ahern, a bad boy who always turns up at the worst time and usually needs Millard to bail him out of trouble.
Rights
sold: Canada, Enfield & Wizenty,
2009. Hungary, IPC/Nouvion, 2010.
|
| 
| David Pitt-Brooke originally trained as a biologist and veterinarian. In addition to practicing veterinary medicine, his research and fieldwork involved falcons, caribou, rattlesnakes and grizzly bears. In 2002, he received the Science in Society Journalism award for his outstanding contribution. For the past 12 years Dr. Pitt-Brooke has lived on the west coast of Vancouver Island. CHASING CLAYOQUOT: A WILDERNESS ALMANAC, seasonal essays. Rights sold: Canada, Raincoast Books Canada 2004, US 2005. Re-publication, Greystone Books, 2009. CROSSING HOME GROUND: A Grassland Odyssey Through Southern Interior British Columbia Rights sold: North America, Harbour Books 2016. |
| 
| Gabrielle Prendergast is the author of the middle grade novel Hildegarde (Harper Collins Australia), which was also made into a feature film, starring Richard E Grant. Her middle grade sports novel Wicket Season will be published by Lorimer Publishers in spring 2012. All about Gabrielle and a great blog here: angelhorn.com. AUDACIOUS, a young adult novel in verse.
Sixteen year old Raphaelle is that girl who says the wrong thing, who crosses the wrong person, who has the wrong hair, the wrong body, the wrong attitude, the totally wrong clothes. She can't do anything right, except draw, but she draws the wrong pictures. When her father moves the family to a small prairie city, Raphaelle wants to leave behind the misfit rebel, the outcast, the vengeful trouble-maker she was. Reborn as "Ella," she plans fit in at her new school, while her perfect younger sister goes to the Catholic girls' school and her emotionally fragile mother looks for a job.
But Ella might just be a different kind of misfit. She's drawn to a brooding boy in her art class, Samir, and expresses her confused feelings in an explicit artwork. When a classmate texts a photo of Ella's art to a younger friend, the horrendous fallout spreads though Ella's life like an uncontrollable disease. Ella is expelled from school and faces pornography charges, her mother is hospitalized, her sister fails all her classes, and her distant father finally notices something is wrong. Rights sold: World, Orca Books 2011, 2013 publication. Two book deal includes a sequel. CAPRICIOUS: Ella’s grade-eleven year was a disaster (Audacious), but as summer approaches, things are looking up. She’s back together with her brooding boyfriend, Samir, although they both want to keep that a secret. She’s also best buddies with David and still not entirely sure about making him boyfriend number two. Though part of her wants to conform to high school norms, the temptation to be radical is just too great.
Managing two secret boyfriends proves harder than Ella expected, especially when Samir and David face separate family crises, and Ella finds herself at the center of an emotional maelstrom. Someone will get hurt. Someone risks losing true love. Someone might finally learn that self-serving actions can have public consequences. And that someone is Ella. Rights sold: World, Orca Books 2014. THE FRAIL DAYS: Stella Wing wants to rock, but everyone else wants to rap. Sixteen-year-old drummer Stella, guitarist Jacob and bassist Miles need a wild singer for their old-school rock band. When they discover nerdy Tamara Donnelly, who nails the national anthem at a baseball game, Stella is not convinced Tamara’s sound is right for the band. Stella wants to turn Tamara into a rock goddess, but Tamara proves to be a confident performer who has her own ideas about music and what it means to be epic cool. When their band, the Frail Days, starts to build a local following, Stella and Tamara clash over the direction the band should take, forcing them to consider what true musical collaboration means. Rights sold: World, Orca Books 2014. PANDAS ON THE EASTSIDE
Journey Song knows that something beautiful is just what her rundown neighborhood needs, but she doesn’t expect it to be two misplaced pandas. In the spring of 1972, the Eastside has NOT seen better days; it’s never had any good days at all. But ten-year-old Journey loves her school and the people she sees in the street every day. To her, it is home. Then on the day the war takes her teacher’s brother, her estranged father returns. When Journey hears that two pandas are being held in a warehouse in the neglected waterfront, she can’t help but get involved. Her infectious enthusiasm for all things panda is hard to resist, and soon she’s getting assistance from all corners of her tight-knit neighborhood. Now all she needs to do is ensure somehow that the pandas aren’t shipped back to China, but instead carry on to their new home. Rights sold: World, Orca Books 2015, 2016 publication. |
| 
| Mary Reid is a mother with two autistic children, one of whom has Asperger Syndrome. Her three romances (“The Camera-Shy Cupid”; “The Gourmet Cupid” and The Electric Cupid”) were originally published by Avalon Books and have been recently bought by Amazon Books for e-book republication. She writes non-fiction articles on parenting and the environment. THE TURING MACHINISTS is a YA novel with a fantastic voice which is both hilarious and heart-breaking (autism! rock bands!). Delmore William Capp is seventeen and he has Asperger Syndrome. He’s fantastic at math and is discovering a gift for composing music but he can’t interpret a facial expression and he cries at the drop of a hat. When his younger sister tells him that their parents are splitting up Del decides that forming a rock band with his autistic classmates will allow him to live out his father’s dream of becoming a rock star, and somehow save his parents’ marriage. But how can six autistic teens who can’t work as a group, perform in front of strangers or even take a bus (or, for drummer Wesley, make it through a meal without vomiting) hope to succeed as rock group? The coming together of the band, The Turing Machinists, helps Del conquer his stutter, make friends for the first time and find a way to connect with Petula, the cute, angry autistic girl he pines for. Rights sold: World, Dancing Cat Books, 2016 publication. |
| 
| Gayla Reid was born in Australia, coming to Canada to do graduate work. Her short stories and articles received many awards. Her first collection, TO BE THERE WITH YOU, (Douglas & McIntyre, Allan & Unwin), won the Ethel Wilson Prize for fiction. COME FROM AFAR is a beautiful and complex novel of the Spanish Civil War. After an unusual childhood in a remote ghost town and an unsuccessful marriage to an English archaeologist, Australian nurse Clancy arrives to help the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Clancy’s chance for happiness amid the chaos comes when she meets a young Canadian volunteer, Douglas Ross. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant Books, 2010. Cormorant will republish ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD and CLOSER APART. ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD is a sweeping, finely calibrated saga of two women whose intense connection is forged during their childhood in rural Australia. Through their lives they experience Saigon at Tet and the Dirty War in Argentina. CLOSER APART: The Ardara Variations depicts the lives of women in the McGinty family in Australia during the years 1901 &emdash; 2001, as the century's wars drum ceaselessly in the background. These two books were published to high critical acclaim. Both were shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Prize for fiction. |
|
|
Karen
Rivers www.karenrivers.com
is the author of books that have been nominated for
national and regional prizes. Her essays for teens
have been included in two anthologies for teens
published by Annick Press (2001, 2002). She published DREAM WATER a juvenile novel in 1999 (Orca) and SURVIVING
SAM (Polestar, Canada and US) in 2001
THE
TREE TATTOO is an adult literary novel
which leads to sudden moments of insight where
language opens unexpected doors. "This is a book
full of passion and restraint in which people try
to make bargains with God but are draw by passion
and need toward dangerous, defiant
acts."
Rights
sold: Canada, published by Cormorant Books, 1999,
rights have reverted
The CARLY SERIES (middle-grade fiction): WAITING TO DIVE
(2000), THE GOLD DIGGERS CLUB (2002), published by Orca Books, Canada and re-issued by Scholastic Canada in 2007 (as BARELY) HANGING ON) and Short-listed for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, and
THE ACTUAL TOTAL TRUTH (Scholastic 2007)
The
HALEY HARMONY series (teen fiction): THE
HEALING TIME OF HICKEYS (2003)
Polestar, Canada and US; Bertelsmann, Germany;
Amphora, Russia. THE
CURE FOR CRUSHES (AND OTHER DEADLY PLAGUES)
Polestar, 2005). THE
QUIRKY GIRLS' GUIDE to REST STOPS and ROAD TRIPS
(Polestar, 2006).
XYZ TRILOGY (teen fiction, Raincoast Books, Canada and US):
X IN FLIGHT (Raincoast, 2007)
X is seventeen-year-old Xenos, a boy with a Greek name, although he isn’t Greek. In many ways, his life is completely ordinary, but in one important way, it isn’t. X can fly.
Y IN THE SHADOWS (Raincoast, 2008)
Yale knows she’s a freak - one of those weird loser kids that everyone ignores. People tend to look right through her, like she were invisible. But then Yale discovers something: if she tries hard enough, she can actually make herself disappear.
WHAT Z SEES (Raincoast, 2008)
Zara has always been tuned in to the thoughts of her twin brother Axel. But after a horrible accident she can see what everyone is thinking.
|
|
|
Nelsa Roberto (out-of-the-wordwork.blogspot.com) is a mild-mannered civil servant by day and ferocious teen fiction writer/hockey mom/van driver by night.
Illegally Blonde. When Lucinda de Amaral comes home with newly bleached blonde hair all she expects is a major lecture from her strict Portuguese parents. What she doesn't expect is the revelation of a shocking secret that her family are illegal aliens who are being deported from Toronto in less than a week. Lucy's desperation to return to her 'real' home results in a reckless plan to buy a fake passport which ensnares her in a web of illegal activity that threatens more than her journey home. But it's when she unexpectedly falls for a guy whose connection to his home is centuries old that she finally realizes you can never really hide from your roots – not even if you bleach them.
Rights Sold:
Great Plains Teen, Canada, 2009.
The Break. When Abby Lambert's parents leave for an emergency Doctors Without Borders mission she knows she'll have to give up her long-anticipated March Break ski trip with her friends to watch over her grandmother (Nona) Lucia. She doesn't like it but if she doesn't stay home she fears her mother will finally commit Nona to the Sunny Haven Community Retirement Home. So begins the craziest week of Abby's life. She somehow agrees to help out at the very place she's been trying to avoid - Sunny Haven. And to make her life even more stressful, she has to deal with Kyle DiLuca - the stuck up nephew of Sunny Haven's owner. But when Nona disappears on a bitter winter night Abby discovers that assumptions aren't always facts and intentions are only as good as what you can deliver on.
Rights Sold:
Great Plains Teen, Canada, for spring 2012.
|
|
|
Janet Romain is an organic farmer and writer. More at janetromain.com.
GRANDPERE is Simon Walker, a native elder living his final years with his Metis granddaughter, Anzel. His health is failing and Anzel writes down his stories. The family grows when a thirteen year-old, previously unknown granddaughter named Angel needs sanctuary. Simon provides unique, sometimes shamanistic help through death, divorce, revenge and healing.
Rights Sold:
Caitlin Press, Canada, 2010.
|
|
|
Dr.
Stanley Semrau is a forensic psychiatrist who
has treated and testified about his assessments of
the mad and the bad on trial.
MURDEROUS
MINDS ON TRIAL: Terrible Tales From A Forensic
Psychiatrist's Casebook (323 pp), with
co-author Judy Gale.
Rights
sold: Canada, Dundurn, 2003
|
|
|
BARRY
SHELL www.science.ca
has made a career of making science comprehensible
to the layperson. His first book, GREAT CANADIAN
SCIENTISTS, was published by Polestar Books in
1997.
SENSATIONAL
SCIENTISTS profiles dozens of scientists and
their work. What does it mean to be a scientist?
Where and how do scientists work? What outstanding
contributions have they made. Barry has interviewed
all of the scientists profiled. Raincoast Books
(fall 2005, Canada and the US). Rights have reverted.
|
| 
| Michael V. Smith www.michaelvsmith.com is a UBC MFA grad, who is a screenwriter, poet and cabaret performer known as Miss Cookie LaWhore. WHAT YOU CAN'T HAVE, a collection of poetry exploring desire and longing in its many forms. Signature Editions, spring 2006. CUMBERLAND (295 pp) is a literary novel in which set in a dying mill town where lonely people look for love and some form of family. With highly favorable reviews (see author's web site), this sophisticated work was shortlisted for the books in Canada/amazon.ca Best First Novel Award. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant books, 2002 PROGRESS
When his small home town is being moved in its entirety to make way for a power dam, Robert returns after a fifteen-year absence to find his parents dead and buried. His sister, Helen, is resisting the government Power Authority which is pressuring her to sign off on the relocation of the family home. Naively, she uses a fatal accident that she witnessed on the dam site as leverage in her negotiations. Robbie struggles to repair the damage when he reveals the compromising circumstances of his sudden disappearance when he and his sister were teenagers. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant books, 2009. Publication date Spring 2011. |
| 
| A graduate of UBC’s MFA program in creative writing, Kara Stanley lives, works and plays on the Sunshine Coast with her musician husband, Simon, and dog Chico. A writer of fiction, non-fiction and song lyrics, Kara is also a teacher of creative writing and a classically-trained Pilates instructor. FALLEN. In 2008 Kara's husband, Simon, fell off a section of unsecured scaffold and suffered a serious brain and spinal cord injury. FALLEN is a memoir covering the story of his fall and subsequent recovery, incorporating a brief overview of the history of neuroscience and current ideas regarding brain plasticity. There is a focus on music throughout, both in Simon's life prior to his accident and the impact it has had in his healing. Rights Sold: Greystone Books, Canada, 2014. GHOST WARNING is a new novel in which a heroine's predictable small town life is suddenly ruptured when her father dies and she moves to Toronto to live with her brother, where she investigates the disappearance of Stella, an elderly woman who is a regular at the bakery where she works, and attempts to reconcile unanswerable questions about her father's death. Rights Sold: Caitlin Press, Canada, 2016. |
|
|
Miriam
Toews has contributed to NPR, Saturday Night
Magazine, Geist, the New York Times
Magazine, and many other
periodicals.
THE FLYING TROUTMANS is a road trip novel with a lot of heart.
A young woman who has been dumped by her boyfriend in Paris returns to Canada to care for her sister's two kids while their mom is back in the psych ward.
Rights
sold: Knopf/Vintage Canada, publication fall 2008; Faber & Faber (UK/Aus/NZ ); Counterpoint (USA); Berlin Verlag (Germany); Schibsted
Forlag (Norway); Tiderne Skifter (Denmark); Nieuw Amsterdam (Netherlands), Recorded Books (NA audio), Kelefthos (Greece), Marcos y Marcos (Italy), Éditions du Boréal (French Canada).
Winner of the Writers' Trust Prize, longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for Manitoba Book Prize.
In SUMMER
OF MY AMAZING LUCK, single mothers living in public
housing take a road trip in a quest for one
of the absent fathers. The book was nominated for
the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and the
Stephen Leacock Medal for Canadian Humour.
Rights
sold: Canada, Turnstone, 1996; stage performance
rights; Counterpoint US; Vintage Canada
(2006); Recorded Books audio.
A
BOY OF GOOD BREEDING is a
warm-hearted novel about Algren, Canada's smallest
town.
Rights
sold: Canada, first published by Stoddart, 1998,
Vintage Canada 2005; serialization of the novel was
broadcast on CBC-Radio; Counterpoint US, spring
2006; Faber & Faber UK; Recorded Books,
audio; Nieuw Amsterdam, 2006; Berlin Verlag, 2006; Isis (UK large print), 2006.
SWING
LOW: A Life (191 pp), is a loving non-fiction
tribute to the author's father who struggled with
manic depression, while shining as a teacher and father. It won the McNally-Robinson
Book of the Year award and the Alexander Isbister
award for non-fiction.
Rights
sold: Canada, first published by Stoddart, 2000,
Vintage Canada 2005;
Arcade,
US (2001)
A
COMPLICATED KINDNESS "Canada's hottest new
novel ... explodes with humour and sorrow."
(Globe & Mail) Nomi, a small town
Mennonite high school girl with attitude, who
dreams of big city life remains with her devout and
weirdly obsessive father after her mother and
sister flee the stifling edicts of the church. Winner of the Governor
General's Award for Fiction, the Young Minds
Fiction Prize (UK), the Margaret Laurence
Award for Fiction, the McNally Robinson
Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Giller
Prize for Fiction. Winner of 2005 CBA Libris Prize
for Best Novel of the Year, and the CBC 2006 Canada Reads competition.
Rights
sold: Knopf/Vintage Canada, 2004; Faber & Faber (UK/Aus/NZ);
Counterpoint (US); DNijgh & Van
Ditmar & (Netherlands); Adelphi (Italy); Editions Boreal (French
Canada); btc and CBC Radio (audio), Berlin Verlag (Germany); Schibsted Publishers (Norway);
Editions du Seuil (France); Relume Dumara (Brazil);
ISIS (UK audio and large print); Anagrama (Spain);
Peoples Publishing (China); Tiderne Skifter,
(Denmark); Owl Publishing Company (Chinese complex); Palavra (Portugal); Kelefthos (Greece); Eye & Heart (Korea).
|
| 
| Tyler Trafford is a the author of the Sun on the Mountains series (Thisteldown). ALMOST A GREAT ESCAPE is a memoir about the author's mother, Alice, and the mysterious gift she left him whens he died. In a long-hidden album he finds pages filled with photographs and Luftwaffe-censored letters from Jens MĂĽller - the Norwegian WWII Spitfire pilot famous for his escape from Stalag Luft III. It took two years and a trip to Norway to make sense of this final gift. More information on Tyler's website. Rights Sold, Canada, Goose Lane Editions for 2013 publication. Italian rights to Sperling Kupfer. |
|
|
Patricia
Van Tighem was a newly married young nurse when
she and her husband were attacked by a grizzly
bear. Patricia died December 14, 2005.
THE
BEAR'S EMBRACE (256 pp) is the true story of
not only surviving the attack, but of how she and
her husband survived the transformation from being
beautiful and strong, to being disfigured, wracked
with pain, enduring years of multiple surgeries. In
a culture which values beauty and good looks, this
memoir offers insight, courage and hope. It was
nominated for several major awards, and earned the
editor, Barbara Pulling, the Tom Fairley
award.
Rights
sold: Canada, Greystone Books, 2000,
2001;
USA,
Anchor/Pantheon, 2001,
2002;
Germany,
btb Verlag, 2003
|
| 
| JC (Jennifer) Villamere knew how to drive a Ski-Doo by age 8, her body is 90 per cent maple syrup and among her prized possessions is a signed 8x10 glossy of Shelagh Rogers. She is the most Canadian woman in the world.
JC (Jennifer) Villamere is an alumna of the Banff Centre for the Arts who studied journalism at Carleton University. She has worked as a senior editor at Canadian Living and Hamilton Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Living, Style at Home, Elle Canada, Flare, The Stone Slide Corrective, Tin Roof Press, Hamilton Magazine, Interiors and more. She’s won two National Magazine Awards and her work has been shortlisted for CBC’s Canada Writes competition.
Since 2011, she’s been blogging about Canadian culture at villamere.com as Villamere: Chief She-Hoser. In 2015, she launched an acclaimed print magazine, Villamere: The Lowbrow Magazine of High-End CanLit. She currently writes about pop music for Entertainment Tonight Canada. IS CANADA EVEN REAL? is a humorous nostalgia trip for Canadians couched in a hipster quiz book and presented in a context that’s inviting and accessible to those beyond our borders. It’s a fun history lesson, a blast from-the-past, and a quirky ode to a quirky land. Our repeated faithfulness to the national fable has the rest of the world — and at times, Canadians themselves — asking: Is Canada even real? It’s a question that’s being asked with increasing frequency as those outside our borders become aware of our waterproof, see-through, mythically maple-scented currency and our improbably hot new prime minister’s assertions that Santa lives here. Rights sold: World, Dundurn, 2016 |
|
|
Dr. David Waltner-Toews is a veterinarian and epidemiologist.
A professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, he has been teaching and doing research in this area for more than 20 years. He is also founding president of Veterinarians without Borders/ Vétérinaires sans Frontières - Canada, and of the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (NESH).
Besides authoring half a dozen books of published poetry and one of fiction, he is author of a book of veterinary advice for novice animal owners (One Animal Among Many: Gaia, Goats and Garlic), an entertaining manual about animal-assisted therapy programs (Good for Your Animals, Good for You), and an introductory text on the practical community-based ecosystem approach to health (Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: a Practical Approach).
THE CHICKENS FIGHT BACK: A book about diseases people share with animals and what we can learn from them. There are hundreds of infections we can - and do - get from animal sources. Not all infections cause disease, and not all diseases become catastrophic.
By examining the true zoonoses - infections of animals that live in animals and only sometimes cause disease in people - we can begin to learn how to encourage the bacteria, viruses and parasites who live in other animals to stay there.
Rights Sold, Canada, Greystone, 2006.
Food, Sex, and Salmonella
NC Press, 1992, and Greystone, 2007, Complex Chinese to Ten Points Publishing (2012)
.
|
| 
| Chris F Westbury is a research psychologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he focuses on understanding the neurological underpinnings and psychological structure of language processes. This is his first novel. THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS, EVEN (the title of a complex sculpture by the French Dadaist artist, Marcel Duchamp) is the story of two charming and germ-phobic obsessive compulsives, Isaac and Greg, who take a road trip from Boston to Philadelphia (which has the world’s largest collection of Duchamp’s work). The two men are driven in a (disinfected) Winnebago by Kelly, a beautiful art scholar who smells like a mixture of lemons and fresh sawdust. In Philadelphia, Isaac plans to pick up an artwork he has commissioned, a working sculptural copy of an ancient chocolate grinder based on one of Duchamp's paintings. Isaac meticulously grinds his own pure chocolate, which prevents the build-up of arterial plaque, because his mother died of a stroke. Along the way Isaac hopes to overcomes his many obsessions and re-enter the real world, with all its germs, imperfections and wonder. (Take that, Duchamp!) Rights sold: World, Counterpoint, for 2014 publication |
Home
| About
Us|
Submissions
|More Authors
