Authors Index

K.J. Rankin is a regular contributor of book reviews to CM Magazine — a major source for both school librarians, and teachers. She is a writer and editor of children’s stories and also facilitates adult and seniors’ creative writing workshops, most of which focus on memoir, Rankin lives in Toronto and this is her first novel.

Bindy's Moon is the third book in Lloyd Ratzlaff's series of literary essays. Ratzlaff is the editor of an anthology of seniors' writings published by READ Saskatoon and a monthly columnist for Prairie Messenger Catholic Journal. He has served on the boards of local, provincial, and national writing organizations and has taught writing classes for the University of Saskatchewan Certificate in Art & Design (USCAD) and the Western Development Museum. Ratzlaff lives in Saskatoon.

Stephen Reid began writing in 1984 while serving a twenty-one-year prison sentence for his role as a member of the “Stopwatch Gang”, so named for their ability to rob banks and armoured cars in less than two minutes. During his sentence, he submitted a manuscript to Susan Musgrave, then writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. This developed into an ongoing correspondence, and Reid and Musgrave were married in 1986 at Kent Institution. Reid also published his novel, Jackrabbit Parole, that year. His articles and essays have been published in Playboy, Vice, Vancouver Magazine, Writers’ Digest, Prison Journal, Monday, and the Globe & Mail. He has taught creative writing, worked as a youth counsellor, and served on boards such as the John Howard Society and PEN Canada. Reid lived with Musgrave and his two daughters in Sidney, BC until 1999, when he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for a bank robbery in Victoria, after a prolonged bout with heroin and cocaine addiction.

Paula Jane Remlinger’s work has appeared in On Spec, CV2, Room, Grain, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly, as well as other journals and anthologies. She is the author of several teacher resource guides (Coteau and Thistledown), and enjoys writing for children and adults. She holds four degrees, including an M.A. in English from the University of Saskatchewan where she wrote her thesis on late Saskatchewan poet John V. Hicks, and an MFA (UBC). She lives in Beaver Creek, SK, with her husband, Trent, and works at the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

DAVID RICHARDS’ education at the Royal Military College in Kingston and his experience as a member of the Canadian Army for six years provided him with the perfect background to explore his fictional territories. First there was Soldier Boys (Thistledown Press, 1993) that transformed the Northwest Rebellion from a “history lesson into a human drama.” Next came Lady at Batoche (Thistledown Press, 1999) that rewrote the Gabriel Dumont/ Louis Riel mythology and won a Saskatchewan Book Award. In 2007, The Plough's Share vividly encompassed late nineteenth century England, the Boer War, and Canada’s Barr Colonist experience. In The Source of Light (2011) Richards focuses his attention, research and storytell;ing on science and technology. David Richards lives in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan for part of the year and Tahsis, a beautiful ocean village on the west coast of Vancouver Island, for the rest of the year.

Harriet Richards’ creative reality was as a visual artist until an obstinate painting insisted on becoming a story. Her fiction has been featured on CBC Radio, and published in Canada and Wales, and her paintings have appeared on book covers in both countries. She lives in Saskatoon. Richards’ novel, The Lavender Child, was finalist for the Fiction Award and won First Book Award, Saskatchewan Book Awards 1998; short story collection, Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die, was finalist for Book of the Year in 2003; short story collection, The Pious Robber, was finalist for Book of the Year and won the Fiction Award 2013. She has edited books of fiction and literary essays for writers across the country.

Ken Rivard was born and raised in Montreal. He is the author of ten published books of poetry, fiction, and children's literature. His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, in many regional and national publications, and on the CBC. His books have been finalists for the Writers Guild of Alberta Book Awards and the City Of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. He has worked as a juror for both the Alberta and Saskatchewan book awards and has been the Writer-in-Residence for the Calgary Public Library and the Writers Guild of Alberta. He lives in Calgary.

William Robertson is a poet, university English instructor, freelance writer, reviewer, and broadcaster. He has published four collections of poems, the most recent of which is Just Living (2005), and a biography of a singer, k.d. lang: Carrying the Torch (1993). He has edited two collections of his Indian Teacher Education Program students’ creative writing, the most recent of which is Where I’m From: ITEP Creative Writing 2005-2013. He has also contributed chapters to books on fishing and on the literary history of Saskatchewan. He was born in Tokyo and has lived in various places in both Japan and Canada, including Ontario, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan. He graduated from high school in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan and went on to do a BA and an MA at the University of Saskatchewan. He was on the editorial board of the NeWest Review for ten years. He has also reviewed plays, books, and musical events for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, to which he has contributed since 1979, and for fifteen years reviewed plays and concerts for CBC Saskatchewan. He was also a regular panelist on the national CBC’s Talking Books program for all of its eleven-year tenure. He teaches English and creative writing in Saskatoon, did so in Prince Albert for twenty-two years at St. Peter’s College in Muenster, Saskatchewan, and at St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon.

Lenore Rowntree lives beside the heron rookery in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. She is excited Thistledown Press will publish her novel Cluck in 2016. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in several publications including Geist, Room Magazine, The New Quarterly, Other Voices, Exile Quarterly, The Tyee, Poet to Poet Anthology (Guernica Editions 2012), and The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology (Tightrope Books 2010). Her self-illustrated book of children’s poems Love Letters received a gold medal from the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards in 2007. Her play The Woods at Tender Creek was produced at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (The Cultch) in 2010. She is a co-editor and contributor to the anthology of life stories Hidden Lives: Coming Out on Mental Illness (Brindle&Glass 2012), and most recently her collection of short stories Dovetail Joint was published in 2015 by Quadra Books.

Craig Russell’s novel, Black Bottle Man won the 2011 American Moonbeam Award gold medal for Young Adult Fantasy. It was also a finalist for the Canadian Prix Aurora Award for best English Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel, as well as for two Manitoba Book Awards in the same year. Russell has directed a variety of theatre productions ranging from The Sound of Music to Romeo and Juliet. His short play, The Unintended Consequences of Love was performed at the 2006 Carol Shields Festival of New Works. His stage adaptation of Black Bottle Man was performed in Brandon and Winnipeg in 2015. By day, Craig Russell is a lawyer and supervises the land titles system for five-thousand square miles of southwestern Manitoba. For the past 26 years he and his wife have been restoring ‘Johnson House’, their 1906 Victorian heritage home in Brandon. Russell grew up on a farm near Carman, MB with his four brothers and five sisters.

Jay Ruzesky was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1965 and he was raised in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Calgary, and Kelowna. He studied at Okanagan College with John Lent; the University of Victoria with the late, Constance Rooke; the University of Windsor with Alistair MacLeod ; and at the Banff Centre for the Arts with Don Coles and Don McKay. His poems and stories have appeared in Canadian and American journals such as Caliban, Prism international, Canadian Literature, Event, Saturday Night, Descant, Border Crossings, and Poetry Northwest. His books include Blue Himalayan Poppies (Nightwood, 2001), Writing on the Wall (Outlaw Editions, 1996), Painting The Yellow House Blue (House of Anansi, 1994), and Am I Glad To See You (Thistledown, 1992). He has been on the editorial board of The Malahat Review for 20 years, and he teaches English, Creative Writing and Film Studies at Vancouver Island University. Essays, interviews and art criticism have appeared in Brick, Poetry Canada Review, and selected gallery publications. He lives on Vancouver Island.