As you probably know, we’re hosting an Ask an Expert event on March 19, 12-4 pm. It’s all online, making it easier to interact with our panel of experienced writers. And we’ll be profiling said writers all week! Without further ado, here’s a bit about Lee Kvern and Kimmy Beach:
Lee Kvern is the award-winning Canadian author of short stories and novels. Her short stories in 7 Ways To Sunday have garnered the national CBC Literary Award, Western Magazine Award, Hazel Hilles Memorial Short Fiction Prize, and the Howard ‘O’ Hagan Award. Afterall selected for Canada Reads (Regional), and also nominated for Alberta Books Awards. The Matter of Sylvie nominated for Alberta Book Awards and the Ottawa Relit Award. Her work has been produced for CBC Radio, published in Event, Descant, Air Canada enRoute, subTerrain. On-line: Joyland.ca, Foundpress.com and LittleFiction.com.
2015 Author-in-Residence for the Calgary Public Library. Upcoming WiR at the Alexandra Centre for Writers Spring 2016. Alberta Writer’s Guild Mentor 2014/2016 and Writer-in-Residence for the Canadian Authors Association 2013. For more info visit www.leekvern.com.
Kimmy Beach‘s fifth book, The Last Temptation of Bond (The University of Alberta Press, 2013), was chosen as one of the best five poetry books of the year on Quill&Quire’s 2013 Readers’ Poll. The book was longlisted for the 2013 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, and was featured on CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers.
Kimmy’s poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews have appeared in journals across the country and in the UK, and she has read across Canada. She was the 2005 International Guest Poet for the Dead Good Poets Society in Liverpool, UK, where she launched her third book, fake Paul, onstage at the Cavern Club in Mathew Street. Work from fake Paul is anthologized in Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After the Beatles (Seren Press, Wales, 2012. Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss, David Woolley, ed.) and in Window Fishing: the Night We Caught Beatlemania (Hidden Brook Press, second edition 2014. John B. Lee, ed.).
Her second book, Alarum Within: theatre poems, has been adapted as a full-length stage play by both the University of Toronto and the Red Deer College Theatre and Film Studies Programme. Kimmy has served as Writer-In-Residence for the Parkland Regional Library, The Writers’ Guild of Alberta, and The Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, and has facilitated worshops and retreats for Sage Hill Writing Experience, The Writers’ Guild of Alberta, The Manitoba Writers’ Guild, The Canadian Literarature Centre at the University of Alberta, and The Saskatchewan Writers Guild. Kimmy currently serves as the AB/NWT Representative on the National Council of the League of Canadian Poets and is the 2016 Coach in Residence for the Canadian Authors’ Assocation Alberta Branch.
She’s working on a novella about a giant puppet, and a novel featuring 1970s romance comics and This is Tom Jones (1969-1971). Kimmy holds a First Class Honours Degree in English from the University of Alberta, and lives in Red Deer with her husband, Stu.
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