Authors' Corners
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Blair Arsenault |
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Arsenault has many students and admirers, but few equals as an author or poet. He ranks among the leading creative talents on Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Professor Frank Ledwell inspired him at the former St Dunstan’s University in Charlottetown. As a result, Arsenault devoted his own career to inspiring others, mainly about the power of written words.
For 33 years, he taught English literature at high schools in Summerside, his home community.
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| Bob Hill |
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A longtime professional writer, Hill produced TV shows in Sydney, Australia, before moving to a northern Thailand village in 1993. There, he worked on a book, Someone Else’s Country, about grappling with an unfamiliar culture, and on a novel, The Vengeance of Wang Lee Tsung.
Hill and his Thai wife endured economic fluctuations, built a dream home, cared for children, made industrial films and settled happily into a farming community. As an agricultural writer, Hill has worked in the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.
His email address: writer_hill@yahoo.com.au |
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| Elsie Sze |
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Toronto-resident Sze grew up in Hong Kong. She’s a teacher and librarian who switched to writing fiction.
Her first novel Hui Gui: A Chinese Story tells of a young man from wartime China who reached Hong Kong as a refugee, gradually building a life for himself. The book, a finalist in ForeWord magazine's Book of the Year Awards, appeared in Canada in 2005 and in the United States in 2006.
Sze enjoys traveling to exotic and unfamiliar places that become settings for stories. She’s working on a second novel.
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Emily Ho
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| This author qualifies as unusual in Hong Kong, her hometown, because she doesn’t know how to play mahjong and dislikes singing at the karaokes. For her, writing is a “cheap” hobby pursued since childhood when she lacked the pocket money for anything else.
In 1998, Ho went to New York to study writing for six months. More recently, she has penned short essays, drawn caricatures and run an ice-cream parlor. She lives on Lamma Island with her fiancé Gary, dog Sugar and cat Tiger. Her email is: icecreamladyhk@gmail.com. |
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| Jay Scott Kanes |
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Kanes lives on Hong Kong's tranquil Lamma Island with a wife, several cats and a dog. He has published two novels, High Degree of Atrocity and Dog-Gone Cat Case, plus one non-fiction title, Island Toes A'Tapping. A former newspaper reporter, he migrated to Asia in 1992. He edited Arts of Asia magazine and later did likewise at such business publications as Hong Kong Enterprise and Hong Kong Electronics.
Kanes welcomes email at: jayscottkanes@cairnsmedia.com |
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| Jennifer Rozens |
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A lifelong admirer of written words, Rozens was born and raised in Champaign, Illinois. She edited a high-school newspaper and later Southern Illinois University’s foreign language department newspaper. In nearby Michigan, she attended Detroit's Wayne State University.
Also a talented fibre artist, Rozens spent many years as a bookseller and a dealer of antique quilts in the U.S. and Canada. She can be reached by email: jennifer.rozens@gmail.com |
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| Karin Bachmann |
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Bachmann was born in Switzerland in 1969. Travelling is her passion. So at intervals she can be found anywhere in the world.
Her first stories were published when she was eighteen. They are mainly whodunits for children and appeared in the SJW series, Zurich, Switzerland, which aims to encourage children to read.
Bachmann started writing in English after pursuing her CPE in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1995.
She can be contacted by e-mail: k.bachmann@matthey-optique.ch |
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| Kolawole Abdul |
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Abdul, from Lagos, Nigeria, grew up in a Muslim and polygamous home as his mother’s second-born child. “When you have a good mother, always listen to her because she’s always there for you with all her love,” he said.
A devoted Christian, Abdul loves reading, writing and singing. He's writing a book titled The Anatomy of Marriage. “I believe that life is beautiful, but too short. You need to do your best and leave the rest to God. My motto is that with honesty, you’ll never fall.”
He adds one more important detail: “I’m still single and searching, hoping to find a true love.” |
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| Lynley Capon |
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Now living and teaching in Thailand, Capon grew up with three sisters in Invercargill, the most southern city in New Zealand. She attended Southland Girls’ High School and then Otago University in Dunedin. After graduating with a degree in English and history, she taught high school.
She married in 1979 and then helped with the repatriation of Vietnamese refugees, which led to instructing people of many nationalities. In 2000, she completed a postgraduate diploma in teaching English as a second language.
Always interested in art and in writing snippets about life, she often sketched or wrote to amuse her children. Mixing work with parenting always provided interesting challenges.
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Marlene Campbell |
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Campbell is a cultural programs assistant with Wyatt Heritage Properties in Summerside, Canada. The Properties holds a mandate to promote arts, heritage and culture in that city of 15,000 people.
Since graduating in political science from the University of Prince Edward Island, she also has worked in radio and agriculture.
She enjoys spending time with her two daughters, working in her flower gardens, restoring antique furniture and writing short stories or plays.
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| Margie Carmichael |
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In 2006, Carmichael, an Atlantic Canadian author, singer and songwriter, published a collection of short stories, And My Name is… Stories From the Quilt.
A resident of Prince Edward Island, she has gained numerous fans by performing at music festivals and on radio. Her musical experience came in bands like the Seagals, Lasses All, Jar O’Comfort, Redstone and Speed the Plough.
Carmichael grew up among 10 children in a musical family. Her brother, the late Urban Carmichael, gained wide acclaim as a comedian and musician. |
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| Reggie MacLellan |
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A Canadian author, MacLellan lives in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, with his wife Robbie and their children, Theresa, Ellen, Billy, Paula and Heather.
MacLellan has published two books, Jottings of a Kitchen Poet and The Shoe Box Collection, both full of reminiscences in poems and prose (Crescent Isle Publishers, email: c.morrison@pei.sympatico.ca). Known as “the kitchen poet”, MacLellan peers out his kitchen window to find inspiration in the eastern sky, children playing and other sights near home. He writes about growing up in Alberton, vacations at Kildare, his family, people he met and places he found interesting. |
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| Susan Ho |
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Susan Ho, her husband and their 12 cats live in the Canadian city of London, Ontario.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ho later studied in Montreal where she earned a degree in fine arts, majoring in graphic design. Always fond of animals, Ho lacked pets as a child, but cats named Sissy and Grey-Grey accompanied her from Montreal back to Hong Kong, where she worked for several years. |
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