Jon Tattrie’s love affair with writing drove him to complete five unpublished (and unpublishable) novels in his twenties and by his early thirties, he’d found work as a journalist, first on the Edinburgh Evening News, then The Scotsman, before returning home to work for the Halifax Daily News. When it closed on his birthday in 2008, he set out as a full-time unemployed freelance journalist, and somehow managed to keep it going. Part of his early inspiration was a phone call from Pottersfield Press on February 6, 2008, when he learned they wanted to publish a novel he’d written set in the Halifax Explosion. He had lied a little bit. It existed only as a short story. As soon as he hung up the phone, he started writing and wrote the first draft of Black Snow in six lost weeks. Days after Black Snow was published, he began his next love story – Limerence, which appeared in 2015. In between, he wrote Cornwallis: The Violent Birth of Halifax; The Hermit of Africville; and Day Trips From Halifax. He lives in Halifax with his wife Giselle and their son Xavier. Find Jon online at jontattrie. ca, or @jontattrie.
When not writing fiction, Michael Ungar writes books for parents and caregivers as a world-renowned researcher on the topic of resilience. His best-selling works include Too Safe For Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive, and his most recent work for families, I Still Love You: Nine Things Troubled Kids Need from Their Parents. He has published fourteen books, 125 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and maintains a blog on Psychology Today’s website. Michael is the founder and co-director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University. In 2012, he received the Canadian Association of Social Workers National Distinguished Service Award for his groundbreaking work on services for young people and their families. He has made over 450 presentations to professional therapists, parents, politicians, and educators in more than forty countries. His work has inspired a generation of professionals and researchers to broaden their understanding of how and why young people do well in different cultures and contexts.
Budge Wilson was born in May 1927 in Halifax. She spent many years in Ontario before returning to live on the South Shore in 1989. After working as a teacher, artist, and fitness instructor, she began writing and her first book came out in 1984, when she was fifty-six. Since then, she has published over thirty books and has been translated into many languages. Budge has received twenty-one Canadian Children’s Book Centre “Our Choice” Awards, the Dartmouth Book Award, the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Award, the Ann Connor Brimer Award, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. In 2004, she became a Member of the Order of Canada and in 2011 was named to the Order of Nova Scotia. Budge was commissioned to write a prequel to Ann of Green Gables, titled Before Green Gables, and it was named by Quill & Quire as one of the “Best Books of 2008.” Budge has given readings, talks, interviews, and workshops across Canada and in the U.K., Germany, and Mexico. She is married to Alan Wilson, and has two daughters and two grandsons. “Mr. Manuel Jenkins” appeared in The Leaving and Other Stories published by Scholastic in 1990. Her first poetry collection, After Swissair, will be published by Pottersfield Press in the spring of 2016.
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