NEWS AND UPDATES

• 2012: PRISM INTERNATIONAL. This fall, I will act as judge for Prism International’s creative nonfiction competition. To promote the competition, editor Jen Neale conducted the following Q&A interview.

• 2012 The Ontario Library Association has announced its 2012 shortlist for its Forest of Readings Silver Birch Award for best nonfiction in the 8-12-year-old category. Included is my recently published collection entitled DUPED! (Annick Press, 2011), an account of eight of the most ingenious swindles ever perpetrated by conmen from around the world. The winner will be announced on May 16, 2013.

• 2012 During the Writers’ Union AGM this year, held in Vancouver, I was invested with the Graeme Gibson Award, for outstanding service to Canada’s writing community. Click here to read the text of Silver Donald Cameron's presentation at the 2012 Writers' Union AGM.

  
  

  Newsclipping from BC Bookworld, Fall, 2012

• 2012: Annick Press has published my young adult graphic (modified) nonfiction collection of high-profile heists and thefts, entitled Robbers!, with illustrations by Remy Simard. It features chapter-length biographies of eight world famous robbers, including Dan Cooper (the only sky-jacker in American aviation history who was never caught), Amil Dinsio (the brains behind the notorious Laguna Niguel bank heist), Vincenzo Perugia (who stole the Mona Lisa), Adam Worth (known throughout the 19th century criminal world as “The Napoleon of Crime”), and Arthur Barry (the classiest jewel thief in Manhattan’s history).

• 2011: I was profiled in a recent article by Marsha Lederman in the Globe and Mail: The Godfather of BC's Non-fiction Boom.

• 2011: My docu-novel DUSTSHIP GLORY has been re-issued by the University of Athabasca Press (Edmonton, AB) with a new afterword by the eminent Saskatchewan poet, dramatist, novelist and nonfictioneer Donald Kerr.

• 2011. I taught a weeklong writing workshop at the Fernie Literary Festival (July 17 - 24) which proved an extremely pleasant gig. Faculty included Marina Endicott, Myrna Kostash, Alison Calder, Aritha Van Herk, Sid Marty, James Keelaghan, Betty Jane Hegerat, Angie Abdou, Warren Cariou, Fred Wah, Tom Wayman and Monica Meneghetti.
  
  
• 2011. This year being the 25th anniversary of Canada's Public Lending Right program, which I was deeply involved in fighting for and setting up, I was asked to deliver the keynote speech for this year's Writers' Union's AGM on the subject of Canada's PLR Program: The Untold Story. The speech was presented in Toronto, at the Toronto Public Library (main branch) on Thursday, May 25/11 to a full house. A transcript of the talk is now available and a podcast of the speech is available at the following link: http://soundcloud.com/sharon-oddie-brown/canadas-plr-the-untold-story