“Tell me a story…” It’s a favorite request of children, but I never outgrew it. I fell in love with stories early and ever since I picked up a copy of Anne of Green Gables I knew I wanted to write them too.

I still love those books I read years ago, with beautiful descriptions that carried me off to far-away places: Montgomery’s Avonlea, Lewis’s Narnia or Enright’s Gone-Away Lake, but I have some newer favorites too: the landscapes of Peace Like a River and The Secret Life of Bees.

Now, I have characters living in my head. Some of them have found their way onto pages of books for adult and middle grade readers. Because it would be too normal to do anything else, I live in northeastern China, where I homeschool my three children and make people laugh with my bad Chinese grammar. Canadian by birth, I am a country-born city-dweller. So all my stories take place in the wilds of Canada or the Amazon rainforest. Or like my work in progress, rural China.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree in Education (TESOL).