Local Author Showcase
SATURDAY, MAY 4 | 11:00 AM TO 2:00 PM
Celebrate the work of local authors at our second Local Author Showcase! At the event, you will be able to speak with local authors, purchase their books, and enjoy author readings! Light refreshments will be served. Free to attend.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Carla Shafer is an author, teacher, and mother of 2 children - one here and one in heaven. Inspired by her personal experience of loss after the passing of her son, her children's book, The Sad Book, takes young readers on a tender journey through sadness. In it, she offers children an opportunity to sit with their emotions and lets them know it's okay to feel the way they do.
|
|
Hello, I'm Caroline K., author and illustrator of the Squeak & Mouse book collection and creator of Picturized Recipes.
I started creating Picturized Recipes when my kiddos were only 9 months old and 2 years old as a way to get them engaged and helping in the kitchen (instead of destroying it). After years of using Picturized Recipes, I thought it would be great to write entertaining children's books based on the real life adventures that my kids and I have had while using them. I include a Picturized Recipe at the back of each of the Squeak & Mouse books as an extra fun activity for parents and children to try that will hopefully encourage and inspire a love for cooking. I believe that cooking includes countless valuable life skills and that it's never too early to start learning them.
|
Squeak & Mouse Make a Muffin Mess |
Connie Blackwood is a loving wife to her husband, Walter. They reside in Strathmore and have three charming cats Rylie, Zoey and Leo. She has mentored children, youth and adults for over 25 years, using her story to help others through traumatic experiences and tough times. She is currently pursuing opportunities to help people navigate these difficult life experiences.
|
Unlovable?: Transforming the Broken Heart from Embers to Radiance |
Danielle has been working with special needs children for nearly two decades. She has helped children with all kinds of different abilities like ADHD, ASD, FASD, learning challenges, and children with backgrounds of trauma. Danielle loves to see the moments when the children finally understand what they have been learning and practicing… that “Ah Ha!” moment. ADHD Gives Me Superpowers is a tribute to how each child has special abilities, even though they need help sometimes.
|
|
Francine Cunningham is an award-winning writer, artist and educator who spends her summer days writing on the prairies and her winter months teaching in the north. Francine is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta but grew up in Calgary, Edmonton, and 100 Mile House, BC. Francine is also Métis, and has settler family roots stretching from as far away as Ireland and Belgium. She currently resides in Alberta but previously spent over a decade calling Vancouver her home.
Her debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for The BC and Yukon Book Prize, The Indigenous Voices Award, and The Vancouver Book Award. Her debut book of short stories God Isn’t Here Today (Invisible Publishing) is out now and is a book of speculative fiction and horror and was longlisted for The Inaugural Carol Shield’s Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the 2023 Indigenous Voices Award, and won the 2023 ReLit award for short fiction. Her first children’s book What If Bedtime
Didn’t Exist (Annick Press) will be out in March 2024 and has been chosen for the 2024 TD Summer Reads Program. She is currently the Canadian Writer in Residence at The University of Calgary.
Francine also writes for television with credits including the teen reality show THAT’S AWSM! among others and was a recipient of a Telus StoryHive grant to make a web-series. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have also appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories, The Best Canadian Non-Fiction, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon’s Prose shortlist, and on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist among others.
You can find out more about her at www.francinecunningham.ca
|
|
|
|
Fred Ash is a grandpa. A former teacher and editor of children’s magazines, he likes to use his retirement years writing stories. He has a BA (Hon.) and a BEd from Memorial University NL. He has a master’s degree in curriculum design from Tyndale University, Toronto.
Born in Newfoundland, Fred now lives in Calgary, Alberta.
|
|
|
Hi there, my name is Kiesha Mastrodimos! I am a 27-year-old quadriplegic who has taught herself how to draw with her immobile hands! I have found healing and joy in creating drawings and putting it together in a colouring book! I hope you find as much joy as I did in these books!
Laura Burgoyne is a wife, mother of 6 children, entrepreneur, author, artist, and farmer from Southern Alberta. She loves people and desires that everyone know their value and worth that comes from God alone. Laura has mentored youth and young adults for over 20 years. In 2021, Laura stepped out to help others find wholeness as a doTERRA Wellness Advocate and the Founding Director of No One Stands Alone Foundation, which helps those struggling with mental health concerns find lasting healing.
|
No One Stands Alone: True Stories of God's Intervention in our Everyday Lives |
Finally Free: Journeying to Wholeness in Body, Soul, and Spirit |
MOIRA DARRELL WILEY is my full name. However, I use my first and middle names to write because, unbelievably, there was already an author named Moira Wiley!
I was born and raised in a small town in Saskatchewan, then moved to Regina. I now live closer to the mountains in Alberta with my husband and kitty. Some family members are close by, others so far away that it brings tears to my eyes. Such is life.
I have been a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a legal secretary (for 22 years), a school admin secretary (for 12 years), a poet, a hand-sculpting potter in many techniques, dabbled in drawing and painting, and have my second level of Reiki (as does Ashley in my second book). I am the author of MESSED-UP CHOICES and SELENA AND HER MYSTERIES.
As a teenager, I loved writing in composition class and have written several poems, some of which found themselves in my books.
I try to live my life to the best of my ability. And “instead of worrying about what was or what might be, rejoice in what IS.”
Read the rest of Moira's biography here:
|
Messed-Up Choices |
|
Rew Jones
Sunday Adeola is a full-time missionary in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, America Continent Two. He is currently the Pastor-in-Charge of Peculiar People Assembly in Strathmore, Alberta and oversees six other churches in Alberta and British Columbia. He had served in some African countries as a missionary before his assignment brought him to Canada a few years ago. He is a sound Bible Teacher who manifests the gift of prophecy. He believes that Jesus Christ can free the captives through ministering deliverance and engaging in prophetic intense prayers. His assignment is to spread the word of hope to his generation's people so they can find hope in every season of their lives. He runs a bi-weekly prayer session via Facebook Live called RECHARGE, based on his passion for the practicality of the Word of God, and runs a bi-weekly program called EMERGE via Instagram Live/Zoom, a platform to inspire, motivate, and encourage young people.
Read the rest of Sunday's biography here:
|
Emerge: The Call to Maximize Your Potentials and Die Empty |
Your Scars: The Proofs of Your Conquest |
