Q&A with d leonard freeston, author of The Sixth Extinction

Tell us about your book.
The Sixth Extinction, my first novel, is the love child of an illicit fling between the police procedural and the thriller. Publishers Weekly compares it with “ … the work of such grand adventure writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard.” While I naturally welcome the allusion to “grand [...]

Q&A with Gina McMurchy-Barber

Has a review or profile ever changed your perspective on your work?
My book, Free as a Bird, came out about 16 months ago. Soon after its release reviews began to trickle in. For the most part they were positive, but from time to time there were some that were unfavourable. I admit those hurt. One [...]

Q&A with Peggy Dymond Leavey, author of Mary Pickford

Tell us about your book.
Mary Pickford, Canada’s Silent Siren, America’s Sweetheart is one in the series of Quest Biographies published by Dundurn Press. My book tells the life story of Mary Pickford, star of the silent screen who was born into poverty in Toronto in 1892 and made her stage debut at the age of [...]

A novel is born

Deborah Kerbel, author of teen novels Mackenzie, Lost and Found and Girl on the Other Side, the latter of which was nominated for the 2010 Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, discusses her latest book, Lure.
1. Tell us about your book.
Lure is a semi-historical YA ghost story based on actual paranormal events that are [...]

Q&A with Anthony Dalton, author of Arctic Naturalist

Writer and adventurer, Anthony Dalton, author of Arctic Naturalist:The Life of J. Dewey Soper, and River Rough, River Smooth, discusses his newest book.

Tell us about the book.
Arctic Naturalist is the first biography of the late J. Dewey Soper. Dewey (193 – 1982) was Canada’s foremost naturalist and a meticulous and fearless explorer. Greatly [...]

From the ordinary to the extraordinary

“There are no extraordinary men…just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.” There’ve been various occasions when I’ve been struck by the trueness of that statement (credited to Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr.); stories of young people overcoming the barriers of poverty to build better lives for their families, or of men [...]

A sporting chance

It’s not that I don’t like sports, but when Marta, our in-house hockey guru, suggested a Canadian sports week, I was not mentally thumbing through my favourite hockey memories.
I toyed with idea of doing the alternative piece; I was intrigued to learn, from the Cricket Canada website, that cricket was so popular in 1867 Prime [...]