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| Three generations of my
mother's family grew up in Haliburton,
Ontario,
so my Canadian roots run deep, even though my sister and brother and I
were born in the States. My father is an aerospace engineer. When I was growing up, his job took us to different U.S. cities including Kalamazoo (twice), Atlanta, and Seattle. I was nine years old when we moved to Toronto. Later we moved to Weston and then to Bramalea, Ontario. I've loved books for as long as I can remember, and no matter where we lived I always felt at home in the library...which is a good thing, because I grew up to be a librarian! |
 Kindergarten
|
 Graduation
|
After
high
school, I
went to the University of Guelph, Ontario. I graduated in 1983 with a
double major in English and Fine Art. Then I
moved to Montreal, where I studied Creative
Writing at Concordia University, and Library and Information Studies at
McGill University. I
finally graduated in 1988 with an M.A. in English and an
M.L.I.S. For the
next
ten years, I worked as a children's librarian at Westmount Public
Library in
Montreal,
Quebec. During
that time, I wrote The Leftover Kid--a novel about a girl whose
mother marries the Prime Minister. It was published in 1997 by Red Deer
Press. I also studied painting and drawing at the Visual Arts Centre, and illustrated a picture book called My Four Lions, by my friend Bernice Gold. |
| In 1999,
shortly after My Four Lions was published, I moved
to Kingston, Ontario. I live above the best ice cream shop in town! A few years ago, driving down a road in Maine in a car full of children's authors, I noticed a mailbox with the name "Plumley Norris" printed on it. What a great name! I imagined a character with that name and put him in my book Famous Dead Canadians. Later,
we discovered that there was a tiny "and" between the two names on the
mailbox...but it didn't matter. "My" Plumley Norris had already taken
on a life of his own. These days I have two jobs. During the week, I work as a reference librarian. But I get up early each morning to write, and spend most weekends writing and painting. I'm a member of SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators), TWUC (The Writer's Union of Canada), and CANSCAIP (The Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers.) |
 The
Mailbox
(click to enlarge) |