AUTHORS
Jocelyn Reekie
Over the years, Jocelyn has worked as a copywriter for radio, a journalist, a storyteller, a fiction writer, an editor and a publisher. Her published work includes articles in weekly and daily newspapers, short stories, two YA novels, four picture books, and two memoirs. Her short stories and novels have been shortlisted for numerous awards.
She also enjoys working with people. "In the distant past, I worked with kids and adults teaching and coaching swimming, and for the John Howard Society as the Program Worker for Diversion for Young Offenders. For a couple of decades, I've worked with young and adult writers teaching workshops, mentoring and editing. Every time I work with someone I discover something new and interesting. I think that's what writing is all about...discovering."
Her books include:
Fiction: Tess (Raincoast, 2002); The Week of the Horse (Raincoast, 2004)
Picture books: A Dog's Life (2008), Whale Hunt (Peregrin, 2010), Kittens and Stars and Cats Who Meet Czars (Peregrin, 2012), The Nut (Peregrin, 2015)
Non-Fiction: I Hope You Know You're Fodder For A Book Someday (blog post, 2021).
Definitely Not James Herriot (Peregrin, 2021)
In addition, she has co-edited and published three anthologies, which include the work of 66 writers and artists.
ShoreLines: Memoirs & Tales of the Discovery Islands (Kingfisher Publishing, 1995);
Escape: An Anthology From North Vancouver Island and the Discovery Islands (Peregrin Pub., 2012);
Please Don't Eat the Cheese: House Mouse Tales (by the authors, 2012)
Diana Stevan
Diana Stevan likes to joke she’s a Jill of all trades as she’s worked as a family therapist, teacher, librarian, model, actress and sports reporter for CBC television. But writing is her passion. She has published newspaper articles, poetry, a short story, a novelette, and novels.
Her novels cross several genres. A Cry from the Deep is a time-slip romantic mystery/adventure; The Rubber Fence was inspired by her work on a psychiatric ward in the 1970s; and Sunflowers Under Fire, and Lilacs in the Dustbowl are historical family sagas based on her Ukrainian grandmother’s life in the Ukraine and in Canada in the early 20th century.
Sunflowers Under Fire was a finalist for the 2019 Whistler Independent Book Awards, sponsored by the Writers Union of Canada; a semi-finalist for the 2019 Kindle Book Awards, Literary Fiction category; and received an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.
Lilacs in the Dustbowl is a sequel to Sunflowers Under Fire. It follows Diana’s grandmother, Lukia Mazurets, and her family to Canada in 1929, and brings their trials as both farmers and immigrants through the Great Depression to vivid life.
When Diana isn’t writing, she loves to garden, travel, and read. With their two daughters grown, she lives with her husband Robert on Vancouver Island and West Vancouver, British Columbia.
Heather Kellerhals-Stewart
Two of Heather’s lifelong interests—call them obsessions—are writing and the world of mountains. The writing interest was propelled when she won a prize for a poem she had written in grade six. The climbing aspect of mountains followed soon thereafter. As soon as possible she moved from the flatlands of Ontario to the mountains of British Columbia and Alberta.
Work with children in foster and group homes in both Vancouver and Edmonton didn’t leave much time for writing, but her first published work—a slim volume detailing the struggles of her daughter to join a hockey team—was born during a cold prairie winter. “Women’s Lib propaganda,” one reviewer cried!
Since then her writing has increasingly focused on the landscape of BC, especially that of Quadra Island where her family bought property in what she describes as “a somewhat late back to the land move,” and she has become a beloved children’s author with 15 published children’s novels and picture books, one of which—Brave Highland Heart—was nominated for the 1999 Governor General’s Award for Illustration (illustration by Werner Zimmermann). As well, she’s had several fiction and non-fiction short stories and essays published in anthologies and has prepared and presented detailed posters that describe some of the early history of mountaineering at Mountain Conferences in Jasper and Banff.
Self-publishing has also landed on Heather’s list of things to explore. To date she has self-published four books, the most recent of which is the shortened account of her Mother’s 1924 trip to Europe, taken from both her letters home and a detailed daily diary. Not to mention the 100 or so postcards that were included! “It was a labour of love for sure,” she says, “deciphering the faded handwriting and dealing with postcards falling from the worn scrapbook.”
Home for Heather is now split between her beautiful farm on Quadra and Campbell River. At the moment she is amusing herself writing up some of the many Quadra stories that have fallen into her lap over the years.