Each year in September, Winnipeg welcomes writers from Canada and around the world for a week of readings, lectures, interviews, conversations, book launches, and other events. That week of literary feasting is known as THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. With programming for adults and children, in English and French, THIN AIR is an infusion of energy into the thriving literary culture of this city. This year’s festival dates are September 21 – 29! The following Tundra authors will be busy visiting young readers in the area, click on their names for a list of their events:
Shane Peacock
Shane Peacock is an award-winning novelist, biographer, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright. He has made his most dramatic impact on readers and critics with his wildly popular Boy Sherlock Holmes series, which mixes brilliant storytelling with fascinating historical detail about turn-of-the-century London. The long list of honours for the first five books include the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz and Geoffrey Bilson Awards; all five are Premier Selections for the Junior Library Guild of America. Three titles have hit the Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award lists, including The Dragon Turn for 2012. The final installment in the series, Becoming Holmes, appears this fall. Peacock lives near Cobourg, ON.
Susin Nielsen
Gemini Award-winner Susin Nielsen is an acclaimed television writer, with sixteen episodes of Degrassi Junior High and an adaptation of Susan Juby’s Alice, I Think to her credit. She is also gifted at reaching the young adult audience with her fiction. Word Nerd and Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom have generated an impressive list of awards and nominations. Both titles have won the Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award, and Nielsen will receive her honour this fall in Winnipeg. Her new title, The Reluctant Journal of Henry K Larsen, presents another resilient adolescent dealing with extraordinary challenges. Nielsen lives in Vancouver, BC.
Heather Hartt-Sussman
Heather Hartt-Sussman has had a lively career as a print and broadcast journalist and Hollywood columnist. She hit the book world with Nana’s Getting Married, which introduced young readers to a grandmother with attitude, and a grandson who struggles to deal with his jealousy of her new boyfriend. Nana and the boy deal with other competitions for attention in Here Comes Hortense!. Hartt-Sussman’s illustrator, Georgia Graham, captures the rollicking energy of the grandparents and the delicate sensibilities of the child. Hartt-Sussman was born in Montreal, lived and worked in LA for nearly fifteen years, and lives now in Toronto.
Georgia Graham
Georgia Graham has illustrated numerous children’s books, including the Wanda books by Barbara Azore, and her own The Lime Green Secret. One of her recent collaborations is with Heather Hartt-Sussman. Their first book, Nana’s Getting Married, introduced young readers to a somewhat possessive boy and his wonderfully unconventional grandmother. Nana is back, and the boy has to deal with Nana’s new husband’s granddaughter in Here Comes Hortense!. Graham’s vivid colours and expressive characters are a big part of the story. Graham grew up in Calgary and now lives on a tree farm in central Alberta.
And you’ll probably want to watch this, the THIN AIR volunteer coordinator has been taking the picture books home for her son to read and review. She’s managed to do a video for the each of the ones he’s read so far!
Go Carter!