Morris House Reading Series

Originally from the UK, Katrina Best began her professional writing career as an in-house writer and editor on a national women’s magazine in London, England in the 1990s. After marrying a Canadian and immigrating to Vancouver, she continued writing freelance feature articles for various publications in the UK and North America, and also began working as a screenwriter, story editor and script analyst in film and television, relocating to Montreal in 2000.

An avid writer – and reader – from a young age, it was only after her two children were born that Katrina enrolled part-time in Concordia University’s creative writing program and began writing literary fiction. Her first book, Bird Eat Bird, a collection of short stories, was published by Insomniac Press in 2010, and went on to win the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada and the Caribbean). As part of the prize, Katrina travelled to the Sydney Writers’ Festival in Australia, where she and the other regional winners participated in readings and community outreach. Subsequently she was invited to be the Commonwealth Writers’ first online writer-in-residence.  She is also the current film columnist for Matrix magazine.

Katrina Best currently lives with her husband and two children in Montreal, where she is at work on a novel about a housewife from North London who is seeking personal enlightenment in all the wrong places.

Author of 14 books, Frances Itani had a spectacular international debut with her first novel, Deafening, which received a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It became a #1 bestseller in Canada and has been published and translated in seventeen countries. Remembering the Bones, also a bestseller, was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize. A three-time CBC Literary Award winner, Itani's short story collection, Poached Egg on Toast, won the Ottawa Book Award and the CAA Jubilee Award for Short Stories. Her latest novel, Requiem, is now available in paperback.

Itani is a champion of adult literacy, and her books, Missing and Listen!, are part of the Good Reads/ABC Life Literacy Canada initiative that works with bestselling Canadian authors to produce short, easy-to-read novels for adults learning to read or upgrading their reading skills. 

A Member of the Order of Canada, Itani lives in Ottawa.

Michèle Plomer was born in Montreal. Her mother is Acadienne and her father British. Her life trajectory was permanently modified upon reading Hergé’s Le lotus bleu at the age of nine. She now shares her time between Quebec’s Eastern Townships (Magog) and South China, two places she loves and that fuel her writing work. 

Michèle has published four novels :

Le jardin sablier, 2007, (prix Alfred-Desrochers ; spécial mention prix Anne-Hébert, Paris ; finalist prix Archambault ; shortlisted prix des Libraires ; shortlisted Prix France-Québec) 

HKPQ, 2009,  (prix France-Québec ; finalist prix Archambault ; shortlisted prix des Libraires)

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Dragonville Trilogy, Porcelaine, 2011, Encre, 2012.  She is at work on volume 3.

Michèle was part of l’Actualité magazine’s list of 35 new voices shaking Quebec litérature (January 2011 issue). 

***This event is being organized for MHRS by Dr. Steven Woodword. Plomer is also presenting at “Creatively Yours: A Mosaic of Bilingual  Readings“ being organized by Diane Mills with the Lennoxville Public Library  & Champlain, on October 24, 2012.  Please contact Diane Mills (dmills@ubishops.ca) for more information.

Anne Fortier grew up in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 2002 to work in film. She co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia and holds a Ph.D. in the History of Ideas from Aarhus University, Denmark. Her first novel, Hyrder paa Bjerget, was published in Denmark in 2005 and again in 2011. Anne’s second novel, Juliet, has been published in over 30 countries,  and was on the New York Times Bestseller List September 2010 - soon to be a Hollywood movie.  Coming in 2013, her next novel, The Sisterhood is the story of Diana Morgan, an aspiring expert on Greek mythology, whose interest in the ancient Amazon warrior women propels her on a quest across Europe in search of a league of secret sisters and the treasure they have been guarding since the days of the Trojan War.

Starnino is a Canadian poet, essaysist, educator, and editor. He was born in Montréal, Québec, into an Italian heritage. His first poetry collection The New World (1997) was nominated for the 1997 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the 1997 Gerald Lampert Award. His second collection Credo (2000) won the 2001 Canadian Authors Association Prize for Poetry and the 2001 David McKeen Award for Poetry. He has also written A Lover's Quarrel (2004), a book of essays on Canadian poetry, and With English Subtitles (2004), a third collection of poems. Starnino's fourth collection, This Way Out (2009), was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry.

He is the editor of Signal Editions, and was formerly editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve. Starnino is well known for the provocative nature of his criticism and his pointed opinions, which have incited a variety of heated counter-criticisms from other poets and critiques. His new book is titled Lazy Bastardism. 

Dodds grew up in Orono, Canada. His first collection of poems, Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House Books, 2008), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the 2007 CBC Literary Award, and the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award.

His poems have been translated into Finnish, French, Latvian, Swedish, German, and Icelandic. In 2007, he held a residency at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators on the island of Götland, Sweden. 

Douglas Gibson has an impressive track record in the publishing industry. He first worked in publishing as a trainee editor with Doubleday Canada. He became its Managing Editor in 1969 and remained until 1974. Macmillan hired him thereafter as Editorial Director of the Trade Division, which brought him in touch with many legends, including Morley Callaghan, W.O. Mitchell and Hugh MacLennan. He also attracted writers like Jack Hodgins, Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro.

In March 1986, Avie Bennett lured him to McClelland and Stewart, where he worked until he became its president and publisher in 2000. His recent publication, Stories about Storytellers (ECW 2011), speaks to these exciting experiences in publishing.