Click here for PAST PROJECTS by Swayze Agency authors.

Frances Backhouse www.backhouse.ca is a veteran freelance journalist who has written for Audubon, New Scientist, Canadian Geographic and numerous other magazines. Her training and experience as a biologist inform her environmental writing, including her books about owls and woodpeckers. Her other three books reflect her ongoing fascination with Klondike gold rush history. WOMEN OF THE KLONDIKE (Whitecap Books, 1995) HIKING WITH GHOSTS: The Chilkoot Trail, Then and Now (Raincoast Books, 1999: rights have reverted.) WOODPECKERS OF NORTH AMERICA (Firefly Books, 2005) OWLS OF NORTH AMERICA, (Firefly Books, 2008) CHILDREN OF THE KLONDIKE, (Whitecap Books, 2010). Although the Klondike gold rush was largely an adult event, a few children—from newborns to toddlers to teenagers—were swept up in this amazing, turn-of-the-century adventure. Children of the Klondike will bring their stories together for the first time. Children of the Klondike won the 2010 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

Arthur Black www.basicblack.com was the popular host of CBC - Radio's Basic Black for 19 years. His live broadcasts filled auditoriums across Canada. Arthur continues to host Weird Homes and Weird Wheels on the Life Channel and writes a column for Fifty Plus. His syndicated columns run in more than 50 Canadian newspapers. He is three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. PITCH BLACK A new collection of essays (Harbour Publishing, spring, 2005). Winner of the Leacock Medal FLASH BLACK Arthur's humorous collection of laughter (Harbour Publishing, spring, 2004) BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER a collection of new comical essays (Harbour Publishing, fall 2004) SALTSPRING ISLAND ON AUDIO (Harbour Publishing, 2009) PITCH BLACK: THE BEST OF ARTHUR BLACK: selections from the award-winning backlist (Harbour Publishing, fall 2005, audio fall 2007) BLACK GOLD: Nuggets from a Lifetime of Laughs (Harbour Publishing, fall 2006) BLACK TO THE GRINDSTONE (Harbour Publishing, 2008) A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLACK (Harbour Publishing, 2010)

Kathy Buckworth www.kathybuckworth.com, a former marketing director, is a contributor to CanadianLiving.com and Today's Parent. She is the author of THE SECRET LIFE OF SUPERMOM: The Tricks and Truths About Having It All (Sourcebooks 2005), which launched a new comic voice for busy moms. SuperMom EveryDay, giftbook and calendar, 2006, Sourcebooks. She is a speaker with prospeakers.com JOURNEY TO THE DARK SIDE: Supermom Goes Home The woman who had it all (children, a busy corporate and domestic life, a good salary and lots of guilt) makes the transition to being at home in the suburbs. Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, Spring 2007 THE BLACKBERRY DIARIES. The BlackBerry is a fantastic example of how we can stay linked to a world which involves mostly us, while living in a reality of playdough, tantrums and judgement (that’d be from the other “challenged” Modern Mummies). Like children, however, all is not sunshine and roses with the BlackBerry. Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, 2008. SHUT UP & EAT: Tales of Chicken, Children and Chardonnay. Kathy applies her razor-sharp wit to an examination of the family meal. Experts claim that sitting down to eat together can prevent children from getting into trouble while simultaneously creating close-knit families. In Buckworth’s opinion, that’s an awful lot to expect from a meatloaf! What about the son who thinks his food tastes better on the blue plate with the fish? Or the daughter who won’t eat anything green? Laugh-out-loud funny, Shut Up and Eat is a must-read for any woman who’s ever wondered: What the hell am I cooking tonight? Rights Sold: Canada, Key Porter, Spring 2010.

Méira Cook’s poetry and prose have been widely published in book form, anthologies, magazines and journals. She has received numerous awards, grants and prizes. STICKY FINGERS, set in post-apartheid Johannesburg shortly after the 1994 democratic election of Nelson Mandela, is the story of the intertwining lives of a once prominent left-leaning liberal Afrikaner family and Beauty Mapule, their domestic servant of more than thirty years. Rights sold: Great Plains Publishing, 2011 for 2012 publication.

Leah Douglas is a new mother and an avid gourmet. She holds a Ph.D. in social work from McGill University, and she teaches at University of the Fraser Valley. She has worked in health care for many years and is happy to combine her passions for delicious food, healthy living and family life. The Gourmet Pregnancy is a lighthearted cookbook filled with chic recipes, beautiful photos and inspirational narratives about cooking and entertaining throughout pregnancy. It is a celebration of pregnancy and women’s bodies, with a positive focus on food, eating and socializing. It encourages women to take pleasure in their pregnancy and promotes diverse and healthy food options. Rights sold: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

kc dyer (www.kcdyer.com) has published four novels for young adults (Dundurn) and a new series with Doubleday. A WALK THROUGH THE WINDOW. Darby Christopher is one cranky teenager. She’s stuck in a one-lobster town for the summer with a pair of weird grandparents and not much to do. A chance encounter with a boy at the end of the street brings some mysterious changes into Darby’s summer. When Darby walks with Gabe through the stone window of an old ruin she finds herself in another world. The window lets Darby look in on the stories of a number of different families as they made their way to Canada - via the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato famine; and even the Bering land bridge into North America. Book 2: FACING FIRE. Vignettes in this book tell the stories of West Coast First Nations, Chinese railroad experience and the gold rush in Barkerville. Rights sold: Canada, Doubleday Canada, 2008

M. A. C. (Marion) Farrant is the acclaimed author of seven collections of satirical and humorous short fiction. Her writing has been widely anthologized in North America, has been dramatized for television and serialized for CBC radio. My Turquoise Years is also being adapted into a stage play in conjunction with the Arts Club Theatre of Vancouver. DARWIN ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE (160 pp), is "an antidote to the stranglehold the corporate media has on the public's imagination, and is a place where uncontaminated thought can still be found". Many of these short vignettes have been published in alternative magazines. Rights sold: Canada, Talon Books, 2003 MY TURQUOISE YEARS Marion's memoir of growing up as a motherless child nurtured by an opinionated aunt, and a small involved family who all try to fathom her selfish spendthrift mother. Rights sold: Canada and US, Greystone Books, 2004 THE SECRET LIVES OF LITTERBUGS. "These twenty essays in the tradition of David Sedaris are funny, sharp, and completely original while describing an utterly familiar world. They include stories about Farrant's childhood, her parenthood, and her writing life; parallels emerge bringing a strong cohesiveness to the collection." Rights sold: Canada, Key Porter, 2008 DOWN THE ROAD TO ETERNITY--NEW AND SELECTED FICTION.. Rights sold: Canada, Talon Books, 2009 The Strange Truth about Us. Rights sold: Canada, Talon Books, 2011 .

MEG FEDERICO regularly writes humor for the National Post. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Shambhala Sun, and Agni Journal (Boston University Press). She also writes commentary for CBC Radio (which she often performs). For several years, she wrote a highly successful column, “Transitions: Issues in Caregiving,” for The Halifax Daily News. WELCOME TO THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE is a laugh out loud travelogue of the author’s two-year tour of duty as manager of her wealthy parents’ homecare in suburban New York—from her home in Nova Scotia, a thousand miles away. When the author’s eighty year old mother and newly minted step-father were finally forced to accept full-time home care, Federico imagined them settling into a Norman-Rockwellian life of docile dependency but contrary to expectations, her parents turned into terrible teens in a world where gravity didn’t apply. Rights sold: World rights to Random House USA. Canadian publication by Doubleday Canada. For all territories contact: dcronin@randomhouse.com

Mark Frutkin www.markfrutkin.com is the author of six books of fiction and three of poetry. His work has been published in Canada, UK, US, Holland, and India. In A MESSAGE FOR THE EMPEROR, Li Wen is on a journey to paint four landscapes, during the year it will take him to travel across southern China to the Song Dynasty Emperor's Court. Seven hundred years later, David McAdams, Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, rediscovers the lost paintings and begins to retrace the artist's journey. Unaware that one of the paintings depicts a map to an ancient tomb filled with gold and jade artefacts, the curator draws the attention of a Chinese triad gang. Rights sold: Canada, Vehicule Press, 2011. FABRIZIO'S RETURN is a literary novel set in the 17th and 18th-century Italy, in which the Devil's Advocate, a hard-eyed Jesuit, investigates a candidate for sainthood. FABRIZIO'S RETURN is described by Alan Cumyn as "a grand novel full of ossuaries and telescopes, gargoyles and magic potions, apocalyptic paintings, angels, comets, violins, of murmurations of starlings and characters -- such characters! -- to make you fall in love." Winner of the 2007 Trillium Book Award. Nominated for the 2007 Sunburst Award. Nominated for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Caribbean/Canada). Rights sold: Knopf Canada (h/c) 2006, Vintage Canada (p/b) 2007; Proszynski, Poland; Inostranka, Russia; Narae, Korea; Editorial ViaMagna, Spain.

Will Ferguson www.willferguson.ca has been a regular columnist for Maclean's Magazine and a frequent contributor to Flare, Globe and Mail and other publications. He is a popular humourist, chronicler of Canadian history, politics, and pop culture and winner of the 2005 Pierre Berton Award for Popularizing Canadian History. His published books include BEAUTY TIPS FROM MOOSE JAW (Knopf Canada), I WAS A TEENAGE KATIMA-VICTIM (Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), BASTARDS AND BONEHEADS (Douglas & McIntyre, 1999), HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO JAPAN (Tuttle 1998), and HOKKAIDO HIGHWAY BLUES (published in Canada and China as HITCHING RIDES WITH BUDDHA) an insightful and witty travel memoir. He is a co-author of GIRLFRIEND'S GUIDE TO HOCKEY with Teena Dickerson and Bruce Spencer (Key Porter, 1999, new edition 2008) and the editor of THE PENGUIN BOOK OF CANADIAN HUMOUR (Penguin Canada, 2006). SPANISH FLY is the story of young Jack McGreary who has been raised in the dying town of Paradise Flats during the the dust storms of the Great Depression. Jack has been forced to live by his wits and when a pair a fast-talking con artists blows through town, Jack falls in with them. Together, they go on a crime spree across the American Southwest, staging a number of inventive and often hilarious cons. Rights sold to Penguin Canada (Canadian English), Publication Fall 2007 & paperback September 2008, Keter Books (Israel), Planeta (Spain), ASA (Portugal), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Harvill Secker (UK), Vintage paperback as Hustle (UK), Muza (Poland). WHY I HATE CANADIANS (220 pp), Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, 1997, Re-issued 2007 HOW TO BE A CANADIAN (even if you already are one) with Ian Ferguson (225 pp), Won the CBA Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the Bill Duthie, BC Booksellers' Choice Prize. 175,000 cc sold. Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, 2001, 2007. CANADIAN HIST0RY FOR DUMMIES 2nd edition, Wiley 2005. Won the Canadian Authors Association Prize for History. HAPPINESS™ is a satirical novel about a self-help book that works. When people begin to lose weight, get rich, quit smoking and have fabulous sex lives, it causes Apocalypse Nice. Winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Prize. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Region Prize (Canada/Caribbean) Rights sold: Canada, Penguin, 2001 (first published under the title, GENERICA); Audio, Canada, Gooselane and sold in over twenty other territories. New paperback Penguin Celebration edition published February 2009.

Cameron Gunn (www.camerongunn.ca) is a lawyer, prosecutor and writer living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is decidedly unqualified to write a book on virtue. That, however, is precisely what qualifies him to follow Franklin. As a prosecutor, the Author is faced with daily ethical dilemmas and as a husband and father he is required to constantly grapple with the quandary of trying to lead a virtuous life as an example to his children. Who could have a greater need for a course dedicated to moral perfection? Attorney, dad, and wife-described sloth Cameron Gunn’s BEN & ME, relates his humbling and often hilarious attempt to live by each of Benjamin Franklin’s thirteen virtues one week at a time, from Temperance and Chastity to Sincerity, Silence, and Moderation, with Humility and a few others thrown in for good measure. BEN & ME: From Temperance to Humility--Stumbling Through Ben Franklin's Thirteen Virtues, One Unvirtuous Day at a Time is the chronicle of one man’s attempt to take up Franklin's challenge, overcome the crushing burden of mediocrity, and stumble in the path of greatness. As he chronicles his successes and failures, the author examines the motivation behind his own journey and western society’s seemingly insatiable appetite for self-improvement schemes. Rights sold: World to Perigee (Penguin USA), publication 2010. Complex Chinese rights sold to Rye Field, Korean rights to Book 21.

Carla Gunn www.carlagunn.com is an educator and writer in Fredericton, N.B. She has written extensively for The Globe and Mail and The National Post and has been heard on CBC radio. In AMPHIBIAN quirky nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh lives in a world of paradox. On the one hand, the adults in his life assure him that everything is just fine while on the other hand, his own steel-trap logic and the Green Channel point to the desperate importance of treating the earth with more respect. Along with the everyday routine of school, playing with his best friend, Bird, sparring with the class bully, and negotiating with his irreverent mother, Phin struggles to convince those around him to consider the evidence of their senses. Much to the chagrin of his teacher, the frustration of his psychologist and the horror of his mother, he stubbornly boycotts products made at the expense of orangutans, talks incessantly about animal welfare and makes saving the class frog his mission. Rights sold: Canada, Coach House, 2009, German rights sold to btb bertelsman. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region) . Named one of five top fiction debuts of 2009 by Globe and Mail's Jim Bartley Longlisted for the Canada Also Reads competition Called "one of the year's most original literary voices" in Quill and Quire's Best Books of 2009 edition Named one of the National Post's "Best Books of 2009"

Genni Gunn www.gennigunn.com was born in Trieste, Italy. Before turning to writing full-time, she toured in rock bands (bass guitar, piano, vocals). Her opera libretto, "Alternate Visions," was staged in 2004. A creative writing instructor, she is also a translator of the works of Italian poet Dacia Maraini. Genni's THRICE UPON A TIME won the 1990 Commonwealth Prize for the best First Novel (Canada/Caribbean division). MATING IN CAPTIVITY won the Gerald Lampert Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of TRAVELLING IN THE GAIT OF A FOX and ON THE ROAD. TRACING IRIS is a complex and exciting literary novel in which a social anthropologist searches for her mother. Rights sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2001 (rights reverted); optioned for film, 2007; Felici, Italy. HUNGERS is a mesmerizing collection about yearning, vice and the dark side of love. Rights sold: Canada, Raincoast Books, 2002 (rights reverted). ALTERNATE VISIONS: an opera libretto half in French and half in English. Spring 2007 FACELESS a new poetry collection explores landscapes that are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced. Rights sold: Canada, Signature Editions, 2007 In SOLITARIA, a family discovers that Vito, the brother they thought living in South America, is actually dead, and has been for years. And, even stranger, their sister has been pretending to receive letters from him for decades. Set in southern Italy in 2002, and spanning two decades, Solitaria is a journey through loss, deception, memory and desire. Rights sold: Canada, Signature Editions, 2010, Felici, Italy.. Longlisted for the Giller Prize.

The influence of Hannah Holborn’s various parents—foster and otherwise—has lent her fiction a unique blend of British humour, Slavic melancholy, naturalism, and First Nations sensibility. She has taught life skills to aboriginal women, inner city youth, and the mentally ill, and is a recipient of a Canada Council Grant for the Arts. Her prize winning stories have appeared in numerous journals including "Room of One's Own" and "Front and Centre". She is writing a novel in Gibsons, British Columbia. FIERCE: With an irresistible combination of playfulness and empathy, these effervescent, sometimes heartbreaking tales of underachieving adults, unfairly burdened children, and the unaccountably hopeful of all ages explore the moments of grace in lives that are too often defined by loss. A punky young woman comes to terms with the accident that took away all of her family except the grandmother who believes she is a bird, and an aging prospector — a woman — discovers that a physical “curse” might have been something of a blessing all along. “The Indian Act” is a compact coming-of-age story, charting the journey of a boy who, though bounced through many foster homes, holds on to the dream of love and unconditional acceptance; and in the novella “River Rising,” three generations in a small town struggle toward joy despite the accidents of fate and the foolish mistakes that almost, but not quite, derail their lives. RIGHTS SOLD: Canada, McClelland & Stewart, 2007 (publication 2009); Italy, Elliot Edizioni.

Aislinn Hunter www.aislinnhunter.com is a personable Vancouver-based teacher of creative writing, with a wealth of experience in arts broadcasting. Her poetry and fiction reflect her fascination with Ireland. WHAT'S LEFT US a collection of six stories and a novella (200 pp) was nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award and received the 2003 Foreword Magazine Silver Medal for Fiction. The book was also shortlisted for the Re-Lit prizes. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2001; French language for the novella Les Allusifs, 2004; Finland, Karisto Oy 2001 INTO THE EARLY HOURS a poetry collection, won the Gerald Lampert Award and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2001. Rights will revert 2008. STAY (269 pp), a dazzling first literary novel in which a young Canadian woman has a love affair with an older disgraced Irish academic, was shortlisted for the Books in Canada/Amazon.ca Best First Novel Prize. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2002 (rights will revert 2008); UK/Irish rights, New Island Press, 2003; film rights optioned by Bright Lights Pictures THE POSSIBLE PAST a poetry collection of great poise and insight, looks at actual historical events and people through a post-modern lens. Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay and Pat Lowther Prizes for Poetry. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2004. Rights will revert 2008.

Harry Karlinsky is a Clinical Professor within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the founding and ongoing Director of the award-winning Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Series and Festival and writes film reviews. This is his first novel. THE EVOLUTION OF INANIMATE OBJECTS: A NOVEL. While carrying out historical research at Ontario’s London Asylum, psychiatrist Harry Karlinsky comes across a familiar surname in the register, one Thomas Darwin of Down, England. Could this Thomas, involuntarily admitted to the asylum in 1879, be a relation of the eminent scientist Charles Darwin? In a narrative woven from letters, memoir abstracts, photographs and illustrations, what emerges is a sketch of Thomas’s life -- from his earliest days at Down House and schooling, through his scholarly works, to his confinement and death within a North American asylum. RIGHTS SOLD: World English (excluding Canada) to Harpercollins UK (The Friday Project).

Pamela Klaffke www.pamelaklaffke.comis a former newspaper and magazine journalist who now works as a novelist and photographer. She is the author of two novels and the non-fiction book, Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping (2003). She has been chronicling the research and writing process of her newest work, The Mod Girls, on the blog www.themodgirls.com. She also writes My Analogue Life, a weekly column that appears in the Analogue Lifestyle section of Lomography Magazine. Her dreamy, vintage-inspired photographs are shot exclusively with analogue cameras using expired and/or damaged film. Her work has appeared in art publications and advertisements around the globe and prints of her work reside in private collections worldwide. Pamela is also the founder and chief curator of the Secret Society of Analogue Art, an organization that encourages the creative fusion of analogue and digital communication and media by offering an ongoing series of participatory art projects. SNAPPED! Sara B. is having a meltdown. She's teetering on the edge of forty and struggling to maintain her persona as Montreal's premier trend-spotter. Snapped! careens through Sara's world as she drinks, smokes, stirs up social melodrama, and becomes increasingly unhinged. She trips from one ridiculous situation to the next, along the way having unexpected encounters with a scheming assistant, a chatty life coach, an cute bar owner, a kind-hearted old lady, and a Rockabilly paper boy in this darkly comic story about a woman who thinks she's losing her cool. Rights sold: World, Mira Books, publish date 2010. EVERY LITTLE THING If it's not one thing, it's her mother Before there were mommy bloggers, there was Britt. San Francisco's brassy scandal queen filled her newspaper column with juicy details of her many marriages, cosmetic surgeries and everything about her only daughter, Mason. Then Britt dies. Suddenly and in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. So Mason-now thirty-five and vehemently un-Britt-like in every way-returns home to settle her affairs...though some affairs are not so easy to settle. Now caught in her own sordid debacle, Mason finds herself thrust back into the spotlight, and this time it's her own doing. Struggling to define herself as anything other than Britt Junior, Mason soon discovers that Britt's intensely public life still held some secrets. And though the overgrown teen rebel has always favored combat boots, she may yet walk a mile in her mother's shoes. Rights sold: World, Mira Books, publish date 2011.

W. P. (Bill) Kinsella is the legendary author of dozens of published works, as well as plays. His stories appear in numerous anthologies around the world, including the touring Baseball is America. Buy the Shoeless Joe e-book. BUTTERFLY WINTER is “an extraordinary and entertaining blend of baseball yarn, magic realism, and political satire, from a master storyteller” says Maurice Mierau, E & W’s editor. It’s the account of Julio and Esteban Pimental, twins whose divine destiny for baseball includes games of catch in the womb. In his aging years the Wizard, a mysterious figure who travels by hot air balloon and controls events behind the scenes, tells the story of the twins and their family to a skeptical journalist. Rights sold: Canada, Great Plains, 2011. Winner of the 2011 Colophon Prize. His Hobemma Indian stories have followed Frank Fencepost and Silas Ermineskin through eight collections: SCARS, DANCE ME OUTSIDE, MOCCASIN TELEGRAPH, FENCEPOST CHRONICLES, BORN INDIAN, THE MISS HOBEMMA BEAUTY PAGEANT, BROTHER FRANK'S GOSPEL HOUR and THE SECRET OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. Sly and whimsical Kinsella short fictions include THE ALLIGATOR REPORT and RED WOLF, RED WOLF. Several films based on these stories have been produced. Lieberman in Love won an Academy Award for best Live Action Short Film. Bill wrote two warmly comic rural novels, BOX SOCIALS and THE WINTER HELEN DROPPED BY. He also wrote two collections of poetry, THE RAINBOW WAREHOUSE and EVEN AT THIS DISTANCE with his late wife, Ann Knight. Bill is best known for his baseball fiction, which includes THRILL OF THE GRASS, THE ADVENTURES OF SLUGGER McBATT (GO THE DISTANCE, THE DIXON CORNBELT LEAGUE, IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY, IF WISHES WERE HORSES, MAGIC TIME, JAPANESE BASEBALL and the award-winning, SHOELESS JOE, which became the much-loved movie, Field of Dreams. Bill Kinsella's most recently published book is ICHIRO DREAMS: Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners, about the place of the right fielder in North American culture. Published in Japan by Kodansha, 2002. All other rights are available (translation required).

Carole Lazar (www.carolelazar.com) practised law for ten years and then was a provincial court judge from 1989 until 2008. This is her first novel. LUCY UNSTRUNG: What do you do when your mom suddenly decides to abandon her responsibilities and make up for all the fun she missed when she was a teenager? That is the dilemma 13 year old Lucy faces. Convinced that her grandma, God and the Catholic Church are on her side, Lucy tries to make her mother see the error of her ways. When her efforts are unsuccessful, Lucy is faced the loss of her family, her home, her school and perhaps even her best friend. As she struggles to preserve what she can of her past life she finds that while Grandma, God and her church are still there for her, these are problems she has to solve for herself. Rights sold: Canada, Tundra, 2009,

Jen Sookfong Lee, www.sookfong.com is popular radio personality, the writing columnist for CBC Radio One's On the Coast with Stephen Quinn and All Points West with Jo-Ann Roberts. Her column, Westcoast Words, explores the plethora of words around us--online, on billboards, in magazines, on stages, everywhere--and the people who write them. She also appears regularly as a columnist on The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers and is a frequent co-host of the Studio One Book Club. Her first piece of young adult fiction, Shelter, will be published by Annick Press as part of its Single Voice series in January 2011. THE END OF EAST, about three generations of Chinese Canadians, published h/c in March 2007 by Knopf Canada and in p/b by Vintage in 2008. This is Knopf's New Face of Fiction title. Other rights sold: USA, Thomas Dunne Books h/c spring 2008, p/b spring 2009 THE BETTER MOTHER opens in 1958, when a chance meeting in a Chinatown alley between Danny Lim, then a young boy temporarily escaping his duties at his father's curio shop, and Miss Val, a longtime burlesque dancer at the end of her career, sets the trajectory for a friendship that resumes in 1982, when Danny and Val meet again at what appears to be an unremarkable wedding. The novel explores coincidental yet fateful relationship between Val, who was once known as The Siamese Kitten, and Danny, a wedding photographer whose life as a gay man is threatened by family obligations and a disease that has not yet been named. The creeping reality of AIDS and a lover from the past force Danny to reassess his fetterless, carefully composed life, while Val, conscious of her own mortality, is haunted by decisions she made twenty-five years earlier. Soon, they are revisiting their secrets together, and peeling back their created illusions to reveal buried identities in the midst of social change, age and loneliness. Searing and sensual, The Better Mother shines a light on parts of our recent past that brim over with human connection and misconnection, tragedy, self-constructed identity and desire. Canadian rights to Knopf Canada for Spring 2011 publication.

John Lekich is a freelance journalist, screenwriter, and film critic. He has a B.Ed. from UBC, and taught high school English and drama until writing took over his life. He is the co-author of MIKE HARCOURT'S PLAN B: ONE MAN'S JOURNEY FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH. THE LOSERS' CLUB (247 pp), a young adult novel for anyone who has ever been bullied, was a finalist for: Governor General's Award, Book of the Year (Foreward Magazine), White Pine, BC Book Prize's Sheila A. Egoff Award, Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, Canadian Library Association - Young Adult Canadian Book Award, Best Books for Young Adults Award. Rights sold: Canada, Annick Press, 2002; UK, Macmillan Young Picador, 2004; France, Bayard Jeuness, 2004, Italy, Mondadori REEL ADVENTURES: The Savvy Teen's Guide to Great Movies (170 pp), is a highly-recommended resource. Rights sold: Canada, Annick Press, 2002 KING OF THE LOST & FOUND is a young adult novel with heart and humour in which 15-year-old Raymond endures the teasing which comes from his mysterious fainting spells. The only bright spot in Raymond's life is in running the Lost & Found in the school basement. When the principal decides to close the operation, Raymond turns to devious and entrereneurial activities. Rights sold: North America, Raincoast Books, 2007 PRISONER OF SNOWFLAKE FALLS centers around the misadventures of a resourceful fifteen-year-old thief named Henry Thelonius Holloway. Henry tends to commit random acts of kindness during break-ins but when when he gets caught in the act he is sent to the titular small town, where he discovers the true meaning of family and friendship. Rights sold: World right to Orca Books for spring 2012.

TRACEY LINDBERG is of Cree-Metis ancestry. She has a doctoral degree in law as well as law degrees from the University of Ottawa, Harvard Law School and the University of Saskatchewan. She has published on numerous academic subjects. BUFFALO GAL is Bernice Meetoos, a big Cree woman from northern Saskatchewan. When a tragedy occurs in her family home, she begins to travel to B.C. on a vision quest. The Frugal Gourmet has been coming to her in dreams and telling her ingredients. Paired with this is her desire to meet Pat Johns (Jesse from The Beachcombers), who is, as Bernice says, a working, healthy Indian man. Part road trip, dream quest and travelogue, the novel touches on the universality of women's experience, regardless of culture or race. To be published by HarperCollins Canada. All other rights Catherine.Macgregor@harpercollins.com.

Andrea MacPherson www.andreamacpherson.com is a UBC MFA graduate. Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines. She is a past editor of Prism International. She teaches Creative Writing and English with University College of the Fraser Valley, and has taught at Malaspina University College, Douglas College and SFU's Writing & Publishing Program. BEYOND THE BLUE spans the years 1879-1918 in Dundee, Scotland, as the lives of Morag, her two daughers and a fey young niece, echo seminal events of their times -- the Tay Bridge disaster, WW I, the suffragette movement, the Easter Uprising, and the influenza scourge. Morag, a worker in the Bowbridge Jute Mill tries to keep her family intact. "Beyond the Blue holds a compelling and important story of First Word War Scotland, a time when women redefined the word hope as the world was losing its innocence. Andrea MacPherson writes beautifully, balancing the lives of her characters between history and the poetry of gesture, secrets and love." -- Ami McKay, author of The Birth House Rights sold: Random House Canada, spring 2007 WHEN SHE WAS ELECTRIC (251 pp) is an intensely passionate first novel which takes place on a small BC farm during the heat wave of 1939. Three generations of women and the neighbouring Indians mix echoes of the past, secrets, and the impending threat of war. Rights sold: Canada, Polestar Books, 2003 Voted Number 6 on CBC Canada Reads: People's Choice. Rights reverted.

Arley McNeney's first novel, Post, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in the Best First Novel category (Canadian/Caribbean zone) and was named on the Top 10 List of Sports-in-Canadian-Literature Moments by "Canadian Literature." She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also won two national championships with the Fighting Illini women's varsity wheelchair basketball team. As a member of the Canadian women's national team, she won two World Championship gold medals and a bronze medal at the Paralympics. Arley currently resides in Vancouver and is busy blogging about her recent hip replacement on her blog, Young and Hip. THE TIME WE ALL WENT MARCHING takes place six months after the end of World War II. Throughout their ten-year marriage, Edie MacDonald has heard countless stories from her husband, Slim, but now she’s left him unconscious in their unheated apartment during the coldest day of the year and is traveling with their four-year-old son Belly to Vancouver. As the train struggles through a snowstorm, Edie turns again to these stories both to comfort her son and to make a crucial decision: should she leave Belly with his grandmother and strike off on her own? Rights sold: North America, Goose Lane Editions, 2010, for fall 2011 publication.

Eric Nicol the grand old man of Canadian humour, is the author of 36 books, radio plays, stage plays and television musicals. He is a three time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. He has received the Order of Canada, the UBC Alumni Merit Award, and the BC Gas Lifetime Achievement Award. SCRIPT TEASE: A Wordsmith's Waxings on Life & Writing. Rights sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2010 CANADIAN POLITICS UNPLUGGED illustrated by Peter Whalley, with Introduction by Stuart MacLean, is classic Nicol nonsense. Rights sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2003; Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club OLD IS IN: Baby Boomers' Guide to Aging Rights sold: Canada, Dundurn Group, 2004

LISA PASOLD (www.lisapasold.com) is a freelance journalist and Paris-based tour guide who writes about travel, architecture and culture. She has two books of poetry published by Frontenac House. She also explores North America in her 1967 Buick Skylark. RATS OF LAS VEGAS is a confident novel about Millard Lacouvy, an unusual young woman whose quick hands and flair for poker take her from Depression-Era Vancouver to the post-war mob town of Las Vegas. Millard is a kid playing for dimes at the local saloon and washing laundry at the Hotel Vancouver when an offer from an accomplished gambler sets her star rising. From rags to riches, her life is haunted by childhood friend and sometimes lover Teddy Ahern, a bad boy who always turns up at the worst time and usually needs Millard to bail him out of trouble. Rights sold: Canada, Enfield & Wizenty, 2009. Hungary, IPC/Nouvion, 2010.

David Pitt-Brooke originally trained as a biologist and veterinarian. In addition to practicing veterinary medicine, his research and fieldwork involved falcons, caribou, rattlesnakes and grizzly bears. In 2002, he received the Science in Society Journalism award for his outstanding contribution. For the past 12 years Dr. Pitt-Brooke has lived on the west coast of Vancouver Island. CHASING CLAYOQUOT: A WILDERNESS ALMANAC, seasonal essays. Rights sold: Canada, Raincoast Books Canada 2004, US 2005. Re-publication, Greystone Books, 2009. GRASSLAND JOURNEY Rights sold: Canada, Greystone Books 2011.

Gayla Reid was born in Australia, coming to Canada to do graduate work. Her short stories and articles received many awards. Her first collection, TO BE THERE WITH YOU, (Douglas & McIntyre, Allan & Unwin), won the Ethel Wilson Prize for fiction. COME FROM AFAR is a beautiful and complex novel of the Spanish Civil War. After an unusual childhood in a remote ghost town and an unsuccessful marriage to an English archaeologist, Australian nurse Clancy arrives to help the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Clancy’s chance for happiness amid the chaos comes when she meets a young Canadian volunteer, Douglas Ross. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant Books, 2010. Cormorant will republish ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD and CLOSER APART in 2011. ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD is a sweeping, finely calibrated saga of two women whose intense connection is forged during their childhood in rural Australia. Through their lives they experience Saigon at Tet and the Dirty War in Argentina. CLOSER APART: The Ardara Variations depicts the lives of women in the McGinty family in Australia during the years 1901 &emdash; 2001, as the century's wars drum ceaselessly in the background. These two books were published to high critical acclaim. Both were shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Prize for fiction.

Nelsa Roberto (out-of-the-wordwork.blogspot.com) is a mild-mannered civil servant by day and ferocious teen fiction writer/hockey mom/van driver by night. Illegally Blonde. When Lucinda de Amaral comes home with newly bleached blonde hair all she expects is a major lecture from her strict Portuguese parents. What she doesn't expect is the revelation of a shocking secret that her family are illegal aliens who are being deported from Toronto in less than a week. Lucy's desperation to return to her 'real' home results in a reckless plan to buy a fake passport which ensnares her in a web of illegal activity that threatens more than her journey home. But it's when she unexpectedly falls for a guy whose connection to his home is centuries old that she finally realizes you can never really hide from your roots – not even if you bleach them. Rights Sold: Great Plains Teen, Canada, 2009. The Break. When Abby Lambert’s parents leave for an emergency Doctors Without Borders mission she knows she’ll have to give up her long-anticipated March Break ski trip with her friends to watch over her grandmother (Nona) Lucia. She doesn’t like it but if she doesn’t stay home she fears her mother will finally commit Nona to the Sunny Haven Community Retirement Home. So begins the craziest week of Abby’s life. She somehow agrees to help out at the very place she’s been trying to avoid – Sunny Haven. And to make her life even more stressful, she has to deal with Kyle DiLuca – the stuck up nephew of Sunny Haven’s owner. But when Nona disappears on a bitter winter night Abby discovers that assumptions aren’t always facts and intentions are only as good as what you can deliver on. Rights Sold: Great Plains Teen, Canada, for spring 2012.

Janet Romain is an organic farmer and writer. GRANDPERE is Simon Walker, a native elder living his final years with his Metis granddaughter, Anzel. His health is failing and Anzel writes down his stories. The family grows when a thirteen year-old, previously unknown granddaughter named Angel needs sanctuary. Simon provides unique, sometimes shamanistic help through death, divorce, revenge and healing. Rights Sold: Caitlin Press, Canada, 2010.

Michael V. Smith www.michaelvsmith.com is a UBC MFA grad, who is a screenwriter, poet and cabaret performer known as Miss Cookie LaWhore. WHAT YOU CAN'T HAVE, a collection of poetry exploring desire and longing in its many forms. Signature Editions, spring 2006. CUMBERLAND (295 pp) is a literary novel in which set in a dying mill town where lonely people look for love and some form of family. With highly favorable reviews (see author's web site), this sophisticated work was shortlisted for the books in Canada/amazon.ca Best First Novel Award. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant books, 2002 PROGRESS When his small home town is being moved in its entirety to make way for a power dam, Robert returns after a fifteen-year absence to find his parents dead and buried. His sister, Helen, is resisting the government Power Authority which is pressuring her to sign off on the relocation of the family home. Naively, she uses a fatal accident that she witnessed on the dam site as leverage in her negotiations. Robbie struggles to repair the damage when he reveals the compromising circumstances of his sudden disappearance when he and his sister were teenagers. Rights sold: Canada, Cormorant books, 2009. Publication date Spring 2011.

Miriam Toews has contributed to NPR, Saturday Night Magazine, Geist, the New York Times Magazine, and many other periodicals. THE FLYING TROUTMANS is a road trip novel with a lot of heart. A young woman who has been dumped by her boyfriend in Paris returns to Canada to care for her sister's two kids while their mom is back in the psych ward. “Toews writes her road song in high-energy original voice filled with love, fear, humour and originality.” The Globe and Mail Rights sold: Knopf/Vintage Canada, publication fall 2008; Faber & Faber (UK/Aus/NZ ); Counterpoint (USA); Berlin Verlag (Germany); Schibsted Forlag (Norway); Tiderne Skifter (Denmark); Nieuw Amsterdam (Netherlands), Recorded Books (NA audio), Kelefthos (Greece), Marcos y Marcos (Italy), Éditions du Boréal (French Canada). Winner of the Writers’ Trust Prize, longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for Manitoba Book Prize. In SUMMER OF MY AMAZING LUCK, single mothers living in public housing take a road trip in a quest for one of the absent fathers. The book was nominated for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Canadian Humour. Rights sold: Canada, Turnstone, 1996; stage performance rights; Counterpoint US; Vintage Canada (2006); Recorded Books audio. A BOY OF GOOD BREEDING is a warm-hearted novel about Algren, Canada's smallest town. Rights sold: Canada, first published by Stoddart, 1998, Vintage Canada 2005; serialization of the novel was broadcast on CBC-Radio; Counterpoint US, spring 2006; Faber & Faber UK; Recorded Books, audio; Nieuw Amsterdam, 2006; Berlin Verlag, 2006; Isis (UK large print), 2006. SWING LOW: A Life (191 pp), is a loving non-fiction tribute to the author's father who struggled with manic depression, while shining as a teacher and father. It won the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year award and the Alexander Isbister award for non-fiction. Rights sold: Canada, first published by Stoddart, 2000, Vintage Canada 2005; Arcade, US (2001) A COMPLICATED KINDNESS "Canada's hottest new novel ... explodes with humour and sorrow." (Globe & Mail) Nomi, a small town Mennonite high school girl with attitude, who dreams of big city life remains with her devout and weirdly obsessive father after her mother and sister flee the stifling edicts of the church. Winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Young Minds Fiction Prize (UK), the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Giller Prize for Fiction. Winner of 2005 CBA Libris Prize for Best Novel of the Year, and the CBC 2006 Canada Reads competition. Rights sold: Knopf/Vintage Canada, 2004; Faber & Faber (UK/Aus/NZ); Counterpoint (US); DNijgh & Van Ditmar & (Netherlands); Adelphi (Italy); Editions Boreal (French Canada); btc and CBC Radio (audio), Berlin Verlag (Germany); Schibsted Publishers (Norway); Editions du Seuil (France); Relume Dumara (Brazil); ISIS (UK audio and large print); Anagrama (Spain); Peoples Publishing (China); Tiderne Skifter, (Denmark); Owl Publishing Company (Chinese complex); Palavra (Portugal); Kelefthos (Greece); Eye & Heart (Korea).

Dr. David Waltner-Toews is a veterinarian and epidemiologist. A professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, he has been teaching and doing research in this area for more than 20 years. He is also founding president of Veterinarians without Borders/ Vétérinaires sans Frontières – Canada, and of the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (NESH). Besides authoring half a dozen books of published poetry and one of fiction, he is author of a book of veterinary advice for novice animal owners (One Animal Among Many: Gaia, Goats and Garlic), an entertaining manual about animal-assisted therapy programs (Good for Your Animals, Good for You), and an introductory text on the practical community-based ecosystem approach to health (Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: a Practical Approach). KNOW SH*T explores the impact of shit(e) or fecal matter on the ecologies of the planet. The book tells the evolutionary and ecological story of excrement. It explores why we should care about it. There is hope on the dung heap, but if we want to solve the problems related to excrement, we must understand how nature works, use nature's designs ourselve, and recognize our place in the world. THE CHICKENS FIGHT BACK: A book about diseases people share with animals and what we can learn from them. There are hundreds of infections we can – and do – get from animal sources. Not all infections cause disease, and not all diseases become catastrophic. By examining the true zoonoses – infections of animals that live in animals and only sometimes cause disease in people – we can begin to learn how to encourage the bacteria, viruses and parasites who live in other animals to stay there. Rights Sold, Canada, Greystone, 2006. Food, Sex, and Salmonella NC Press, 1992, and Greystone, 2007.

Mark Zuehlke www.zuehlke.ca is a career author with numerous guide books and fact books to his credit. He is best known for his meticulously researched and accessible military histories. He is the recipient of the 2007 Thompson Rivers University Distinguished Alumni Award. Elias McCann series about a lay coroner. Published by Dundurn, Castle Street Mysteries Arthur Ellis prize winners. Each title is a tai chi move. Hands Like Clouds (2000), Carry Tiger to Mountain (2002), and Sweep Lotus (2004). CANADIAN BATTLE SERIES Published by Douglas & McIntyre Canadians in the Italian Campaign. ORTONA: Canada's Epic World War II Battle (2003). THE LIRI VALLEY: Canada's World War II Breakthrough to Rome (2003). THE GOTHIC LINE: Canada's Month of Hell in World War II Italy (2004). SICILY: an account of the heroic work of the Canadian troops during the battle for Sicily in WWII. (2008) Canadians in the Normandy Campaign. JUNO BEACH: Canada's D-Day Victory, June 6, 1944 (2004). HOLDING JUNO: CANADA'S HEROIC DEFENCE OF THE D-DAY BEACHES, June 7 - 12, 1944(2005). Winner of 2006 Victoria Butler Book Prize. BREAKOUT FROM JUNO: First Canadian Army in Normandy, July-August, 1944. Fall 2011 DECISION ON THE RHINE: First Canadian Army's Rhineland Campaign, February 8-March 10, 1945. Fall 2012. TERRIBLE VICTORY: First Canadian Army and the Scheldt Estuary Campaign September 13-November 6, 1944. (2007). ON TO VICTORY. The Canadian Liberation of the Netherlands, March 23—May 5, 1945. FOR HONOUR'S SAKE: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace The military, diplomatic and political history leading to a pivotal event in Canada-US relations. Winner: Lela Common Canadian Authors Prize for History. Finalist for the Victoria Butler Prize. Rights sold: Knopf Canada, fall 2006 Brave Battalion: The Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World War presents the story of four Canadian Scottish regiments that were banded together as the 16th Battalion. Rights sold: John Wiley & Sons, fall 2008 SCOUNDRELS, DREAMERS & SECOND SONS: British Remittance Men in the Canadian West - revised second edition. Rights sold: Canada, Dundurn Press, 2001. THE GALLANT CAUSE: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. Personal accounts of those who fought against facism. Among their numbers were Dr. Norman Bethune and Jean Watts, one of the few women to volunteer in the legendary International Brigades. Published by Whitecap in 1996; Wiley Canada 2007 THE CANADIAN MILITARY ATLAS: The Nation's Battlefields from the French and Indian Wars to Kosovo with cartographer C. Stuart Daniel. Published by Stoddart in 2001, re-published as FOUR CENTURIES OF CONFLICT: FROM NEW FRANCE TO KOSOVO by Douglas & McIntyre, fall 2006

Home | About Us| Submissions |