About the Author
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In many ways, my life has revolved around literature, at least from my teenage years on. My encounter with The Lord of The Rings when I was 15 or 16 was decisive, as I’ve mentioned in the documentary/drama The Fantasy Makers (2017) and in a number of Youtube video interviews. While it’s true that my life has revolved around literature, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the Inklings, along with their friends and literary forebears, most powerfully shaped my life.
Indeed, my academic career arose out of a Christmas gift, a boxed set of six Charles Williams novels, all of which I read over the holidays. The effect on me was extraordinary, just as it had been on C. S. Lewis himself when he read Williams’ The Place of the Lion. To put it bluntly, Williams opened up my sense of reality. That said, it was dissatisfaction with one of these novels—Shadows of Ecstasy—that led to my Honours BA thesis, my MA thesis, and finally my PhD thesis at Cambridge, which I attended as a Commonwealth Scholar. I even ended up at Magdalene College, Lewis’ home when he held the Chair of Renaissance and Mediaeval English at Cambridge. I met friends of Lewis, including then young dons whom he had taken under his wing, and interviewed the last surviving Inkling: Owen Barfield. My time there was an extraordinary privilege.
I then taught English over the next thirty years or so, specializing in the literature I loved best: children’s literature and young adult fantasy. Towards the end of my time at Trinity Western University, I co-founded the Inklings Institute of Canada with my colleague Monika Hilder. We continue to co-direct it to this day. It is, without doubt, the most significant centre for Inklings studies in Canada, also boasting an impressive international membership.
It was at one of our regular Inklings Institute meetings that I accepted the challenge issued in a documentary on Lewis’ legacy to follow in the Inklings’ steps and do what they did: offer the world works of imagination. And I was well positioned to do so. Not only had I studied and taught fantasy literature for years, but I’d had considerable practice concocting stories for my children and, most recently, for my six insatiable grandchildren.
To date, I have written a three-book series, The Perilous Times Saga. The first book, Suzy and the Magic Turnip, is out; the second, Suzy and the City of the Plain, is with the publisher and will come out later this year; and the third, Suzy and the Time of Changes, is written. I have also published a book under the pseudonym Justan Thyme, entitled Trolls on Mars: A Love Story. Don’t ask.
Those interested in checking out the Youtube videos can find descriptions and links under the Media tab on this website.