BOOK LAUNCH 

ABOUT THE PEN PALS

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Debra Kuzbik

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is an award-winning educator, author and photographer. She holds Bachelor of Education and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Regina, as well as a Master of Education degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

 

After over thirty years as a teacher, education administrator, and Director of Education, Debra and her husband John, retired from Saskatchewan to Vancouver Island where two of their adult children also live. Their eldest son and his family reside in Saskatoon.

 

In addition to writing and photography, Debra enjoys creating art, gardening, yoga, traveling, and spending time with her grandson.

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​Micki Findlay

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Micki Findlay, an author, poet and freelance columnist, focusses primarily on writing memoir

prose and poetry in hopes of helping others recognize their self-worth, find hope through difficult circumstances, and realize they are not alone in their struggles.

 

Micki’s writing has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Van Isle Poetry Collective, Black Press Media, various magazines including Oasis Life and EyesOnBC, and several anthologies including Back The Way We Came by The Memory Keepers, Crone Rising by Jazz House Publications, and Grateful by Quillkeepers Press.

 

Her poems, These Hands and If Given The Chance, won awards, and her story, ‘Too Late’, was a finalist in the Women on Writing 2024 non-fiction writing contest. Several of her poems were accepted for the 2024 Perth Poetry Festival’s Poetry on the Big Screen, at the Northbridge Piazza in Perth, Australia.

 

Micki lives to write and writes to live. Creativity, collaboration, and coffee are her love languages.

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Jacqui Townsend

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Living alone now, in French Creek, BC,

Jacqui Townsend can look back, decade by decade, to Calgary – 1941, and write her life, chapter by chapter. All her growing up moments work into her writings of today.

 

The ‘50’s are historically the best time to have been a teenager and the ‘60’s – the best time, though early, to marry the love of her life, Bill Townsend.

 

They travelled, lived carefree, and emigrated to Australia where they began the ‘70’s with the birth of their son, David Warwick. Their return home to Canada, before the ‘bust ‘80’s’, brought the family to paradise on Vancouver Island.

 

From then to now, Jacqui had a career in nursing, wrote two newspaper columns, published a cookbook, discovered directorship at Elder College, flash fiction, poetry, and how to form her thoughts into words with the encouragement of friends within her writing group, The Pen Pals.

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Lynn McEwan

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Born in the year of Hurricane Hazel, Lynn McEwan

has since circled her creative life as a traveller, parent, artist, and educator.

 

A past member of the Canadian Authors Association (Sarnia) and the Canadian Poetry Association, her writing was published in Prairie Fire and Poemata.

As a proud Haudenosaunee woman, Lynn enjoys learning and sharing her heritage and experiences through both poetry and prose.​​

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Ramona Jones

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I’ve asked my stories and poems to stand up for themselves because, I haven’t many writing credits to my name to prove I’m good. Because of a teacher, Debra Kuzbik, I joined a writer’s group who made room for me and my stories. Thanks to writer and editor, Micki Findlay, I got an invitation to be in this book. I got my kicks, a pressure release, writing. I did study English Literature at SFU, but so long ago, so much forgotten. Please don’t hold me to that. Thanks for your time, limited and prized, it’s my pleasure.​​

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