Meet the Writers

Joel Bakan

The Corporation, Joel Bakan's book and companion film, winners of over two-dozen awards, are summed up quite succinctly in the subtitle: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Corporations, he says, with the advantage of deregulation, privatization and lack of government oversight, have been free to pursue their relentless self-interest regardless of any consequent harm to society. The versatile UBC law professor's latest book is Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. Here again, governments have largely abdicated responsibility.

Gail Bowen

Canada is home to a large community of internationally acclaimed mystery writers, many of them women and many featuring a strong female protagonist. Of these there is none better than Gail Bowen whose popular Joanne Kilbourn series will amount to a baker's dozen with the release of Kaleidoscope in April 2012. The Arthur Ellis Award-winning, Regina based author has also written five plays and six of her books have been made into TV movies.

Wayson Choy

Who better to help us celebrate our 30th anniversary than Wayson Choy? This will mark the beloved Canadian literary icon's fifth Festival appearance. His Trillium award-winning novels, The Jade Peony and All That Matters, made him a household name. The memoir, Paper Shadows, winner of the Charles Taylor Prize, reached back to his childhood in Vancouver's Chinatown and Not Yet is a philosophical memoir inspired by his two near-death experiences. He is currently at work on a new novel based on a character from The Jade Peony.

Lorna Crozier

She is one of Canada's foremost poets, and the life, and sometimes writing and editing, partner of Patrick Lane. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Governor General's Award for Poetry. The most recent of her 15 volumes of poetry is The Blue Hour of the Day, a selection of poems drawn from her eight major collections. Her latest book is the acclaimed memoir, Small Beneath the Sky.

Michael Crummey

His first novel, River Thieves, was a bestseller, won several major literary awards and was short-listed for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Books in Canada First Novel award. The popular Newfoundland native's latest novel, Galore, is short-listed for the 2011 IMPAC Award.

Camilla Gibb

Camilla Gibb's fourth novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, appears to be on track for the same bestselling, award winning territory as her previous three. Her 2005 novel, Sweetness in the Belly, won the Trillium Prize and was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Award.

Douglas Gibson

Writers from every part of Canada, including most of the biggest names in Canadian literature, know who Douglas Gibson is because he has been editor and/or publisher of many of their books. Readers will now have an opportunity to get to know him (and a bit more about some of his famous friends) by reading his fascinating book, Stories About Storytellers.

Patrick Lane

He is one of this country's most respected poets. He has been doing it since 1960 and during the ensuing five decades has produced dozens of volumes of poetry as well as the novel, Red Dog, Red Dog and the lyrical memoir There is a Season. He has won pretty much every major Canadian literary award. His most recent books are Witness: Selected Poems 1962-2010 and The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane.

JJ Lee

JJ Lee was well known as the Vancouver Sun's menswear columnist and a regular fashion commentator on CBC Radio. In 2006 he gave all that up in order to apprentice as a tailor at Modernize Tailors, a 99 year old Vancouver institution run by brothers Bill and Jack Wong. It's all chronicled in The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit. The book was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award and is currently a finalist for the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. He is now back where he left off and can again be heard on CBC Radio and read in the Vancouver Sun.

Linden MacIntyre

He is familiar to millions of Canadians as co-host, since 1990, of the weekly newsmagazine program The Fifth Estate. During some 35 years of investigative journalism on CBC television, Linden McIntyre has won nine Gemini Awards and an International Emmy. His writing, too, has not gone unrewarded. His second novel, The Bishop's Man, was a #1 national bestseller and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His follow up novel, Why Men Lie, is due for release in the spring of 2012.

Ami McKay

The Nova Scotia farmhouse owned by Ami McKay and her husband inspired her breakout bestselling novel, The Birth House. Legend has it that the house was occupied in the early 20th century by a midwife and was known locally as "the birth house." She goes back a little further in history for her latest novel, The Virgin Cure, set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the late 1800s.

Anne Michaels

She joined Canada's literary top tier when her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, appeared 15 years ago to instant acclaim, scads of awards and long-term tenure on bestseller lists. It took another dozen years for Michaels, who is primarily a poet, to complete The Winter Vault, her second novel, a complex story of love, loss, destruction and rebuilding.

New Voices: Robyn Levy and Kim Clark with Sheryl MacKay

You're a woman in your forties, the prime of life, a time when life is supposed to begin. But what if what begins is the new reality of living with incurable disease. Life could be a bitch if you didn't have the right ammo to take it on. The weapon of choice for both of this year's new voices is the mighty pen, or its electronic equivalent.

Writing was how Kim Clark decided to deal with a bad deal, progressive Multiple Sclerosis. She was 41, had four children, a shaky marriage and had never finished high school, none of which was enough to deter her from acquiring a BA in creative writing and reinventing herself as an award-winning poet and writer. Attemptations is her first published collection of fiction.

Visual artist, animator, radio broadcaster, actor, writer, wife and mother Robyn Levy, after five years of not feeling quite right, was diagnosed, at age 43, with the double whammy of early onset Parkinson's disease and breast cancer. Her memoir, Most of Me: Surviving My Medical Meltdown, is her sad, funny, no punches pulled account of her life since her dual diagnoses.

The New Voices event will be hosted by Sheryl MacKay, host of CBC Radio One's North by Northwest.

Eric Paetkau and Howard White with Patrick Munro

For over 40 years Eric Paetkau was a general practitioner and the principal surgeon on the Sunshine Coast. In the early days, that meant endless travel up and down the coast's winding highway, being on call day and night, not always being paid and even having to do rudimentary dental and veterinary work. His book, The Doc's Side, is a fascinating memoir; a must read for anyone who has ever lived on the Sunshine Coast, and for all readers, an insight into frontier medicine in British Columbia. Dr. Paetkau will be joined by his publisher, Howard White of Harbour Publishing.

Howard White is the co-founder, with his wife, Mary, of Harbour Publishing, a small publishing house located in Madeira Park, BC. Harbour's specialty is books about BC, particularly coastal history and lore. Many of these are small, regionally specific books that would otherwise remain unpublished. The now legendary and collectible Raincoast Chronicles series numbers 21 volumes since its initial release in 1972. Howard White, himself a writer, has won the Stephen Leacock Medal For Humour and has been awarded both the Order of BC and the Order of Canada. His latest book is The Sunshine Coast: From Gibsons to Powell River (2nd Edition).

Patrick Munro, former CBC Radio host and newsman, now retired and living happily in Pender Harbour, will moderate a discussion with Mr. White and Dr. Paetkau.

Noah Richler

Canada, and the meaning of being Canadian has rarely been so thoroughly and thoughtfully dissected as by Noah Richler and the nearly 100 Canadian authors he interviewed for his first book, This is My Country, What's Yours: A Literary Atlas of Canada. The award-winning author, journalist, filmmaker and documentarian will deliver the 2012 Bruce Hutchison Memorial Lecture. His new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About War will be published in 2012.

Peter Robinson

It was only a matter of time before DCI Banks came to television and after a hugely popular run of 20 Banks novels, Peter Robinson's complex copper was picked up by Britain's ITV. 6 episodes have aired and 3 more are slated to follow. A DVD will soon be available. Peter's latest is Before the Poison, his first non-Banks novel in 20 years.

Jane Urquhart

She is the author of seven internationally-acclaimed novels including the bestseller and multiple award winner, The Stone Carvers. In Sanctuary Line, her eighth and latest novel, and a finalist for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Urquhart deftly mixes history, fiction and three intersecting story lines.

Richard Wagamese

If you saw him last time he was here, you know. If you didn't, take heed: you missed one of the most riveting Bruce Hutchison Memorial Lectures we have seen in its 17-year history. The award-winning Ojibway writer, storyteller, broadcaster and journalist, with eight books to his credit, has just released Runaway Dreams, his first book of poetry. His new novel, Indian Horse, will be published in February.