White Pine nominee – Authors' Booking Service

Stroud, Les (Huntsville, ON)

Writers Union Member, Fiction & NF, Globe and Mail best seller, Yellow Cedar Book Award Winner, Information Book Award Winner, Rocky Mountain Book Award Runner Up, Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award Short List, Nominated for numerous awards including White Pine award. All ages.

$600 plus HST for 1 in-person session ($850 for 2), + travel. Virtual Visits: $400 plus HST, for one session up to 60 minutes, $250 for each additional session on the same day.

Les is an experienced, passionate and highly sought after international speaker who tailors each presentation to the group in front of him. He can do up two presentations in the same school or area in a day. As an award winning filmmaker and composer and the author of adventure books, he routinely presents to an entire school over the course of a day along with happily speaking to adult groups.

Les Stroud has authored five books and over a thousand magazine articles as he crafts storytelling and interesting information into compelling works whether on screen or on the page. His book, Survive! – Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere–Alive! (Harper Collins) made the Globe and Mail’s best-seller list, and he recently won the Canadian Yellow Cedar Award and the National Information Book Award for his first children’s book, Wild Outside.

Presentations:

Les Stroud is an extremely flexible presenter. No two of his presentations are ever the same. He prefers to have a conversation with the audience, so long Q&A sessions are always lively and engaging. When possible, he often brings video with compelling and beautiful images of nature and wildlife from around the world.

Les does an amazing job of making kids feel empowered to enjoy the natural world around them whether they come from an adventurous outdoor oriented family or live inner city and rarely see nature at all. He guides them through how to interact with the smallest of creatures to the largest in the natural world. Creatures both mammal and insect and avian that can be found everywhere including the city streets.

Grades 4 to 8: Les’ book Wild Outside is for this age group. 45 to 60 minutes. Includes how he found adventure in his own backyard and how he turned that into a globetrotting career connecting to nature and most importantly, how they can have adventures in nature themselves. Writing, filmmaking and sometimes even composing tips along with a Q&A are worked in seamlessly.

Works:

Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get Out Of Anywhere Alive

Les’ seminal work which is a manual that quickly became the bar to compare all other works of this genre to.

Beyond Survival

A stunning photograph-heavy book telling story after story of Les’ adventures while filming, surviving and doing earth ceremonies with remote tribes around the globe.

Will To Live

Les’ top ten all-time favourite survival stories. What they did right. What they did wrong. And how things could’ve been so much different.

Wild Outside; Around the World With Survivorman

Les’ award-winning children’s book written for and to kids aged 5 through 14. An exciting travelogue of journeys around the world featuring wildlife adventures complete with lessons learned and activities the reader can do themselves.

Maximum group sizes for presentations: No maximum. Minimum 45.

Workshops:

Specialty workshops in-person featuring survival, outdoor adventure and filmmaking skills can be considered on a case-by-case basis.

All Venues possible, library or school preferred. Equipment required: Water, Lunch (if staying all day). A table. A proper PA system with lavaliere mic for larger groups. A screen and projector for power-point and video when required – with high quality sound system. *For Q&A’s it is highly advisable and preferred to have questions prepared and gathered ahead of time and delivered to Les in written form.

Contact Les to book a visit:

Goerzen, Christy (Vancouver, BC)

White Pine Award nominee. Recipient of Canada Council of the Arts and BC Arts Council grants.

Workshops for ages 12 to 17. $250.00 for one 60-minute session. $450 for two sessions. $675 for three sessions and $900 for 4 sessions, plus travel (50 cents per kilometer, round-trip for the Metro Vancouver area).

Virtual Visits: $150 for one 60-minute session, $100 for each additional session on the same day, up to four sessions in one day.

Christy Goerzen writes young adult novels about artists and underdogs finding their way in the world. Her past novels include RIVER MERMAID (Crwth Press, 2021), as well as EXPLORE (2009), FARMED OUT (2011), and The BIG APPLE EFFECT (2014), all from Orca Book Publishers. Her books have been nominated for awards, appeared on several “best of” lists, and have been translated into several other languages.

After a decade working in the arts industry for countless festivals, artists, musicians, dance companies and more, Christy became an award-winning university instructor in arts and entertainment management, a career that she loves dearly. Plus, she gets to talk about movies, music and art all day – what could be better? Currently working toward her PhD in Education, she has a BA in English Literature, an MA Children’s Literature. Originally from Maple Ridge, BC, Christy lives in Vancouver with her two lovely kids and a majestic one-eyed cat. In her spare time she likes to read, draw (badly), lift heavy things, listen to podcasts, and have random dance parties.

In her workshops and presentations, Christy loves to bring authenticity and humour as she talks about her creative inspirations, the writing process, developing characters that come alive, writing great dialogue, poetry and freewriting as a creative “spark,” the publishing industry, and everything in between!

Presentations/workshops – Age group: 12 – 17 (Grades 7 – 12)

Christy likes to keep her presentations informal, interactive and chatty! Presentations/workshops will include:

Author introduction and background/biography
Introduction on writing/inspiration for the book
Her writing process
Where she gets her ideas
How it got published/process
Q & A

Christy is happy to create workshops on the topic of poetry writing, freewriting/jamming on ideas, plot structure, character development, dialogue, and more for this age group. Just ask and she can tailor something for your group!

All venues; library or classroom preferred. General Equipment needs: Christy likes to keep it low-tech and chat with the students! For in-person visits, just a chair is all that’s needed. For virtual visits, school Zoom account (or similar). Student supplies depend on chosen session and will be discussed prior to visit.

Contact Christy to book a visit:

McLaughlin, Kate (Waterbury, Connecticut)

USA Today and Amazon bestseller. 2022 White Pine winner. 2023 White Pine nominee. Multiple American awards. Young Adult and Adult focus. In-person visits, airfare/travel + accommodation. Negotiable depending on location and event.

Virtual visits $250 + HST for 30-60 minutes. $400 for two sessions. Multiple session rate negotiable.

Kate is a multi-genre author with several pen names and more than twenty-years’ experience in the publishing industry. She has written for several big New York houses and has spoken at events such as Book Expo America, DragonCon and New York ComicCon. She has also taught writing classes and given workshops on writing and publishing. Born in Nova Scotia, Kate lived in Halifax, Ottawa and Toronto before moving to the US with her husband.

On the Young Adult level, Kate has done many in-school visits and loves talking to teens about books, writing and life in general. She is flexible with her presentation style, focusing on the needs of the audience rather than a set program. She is more than happy to work with teachers and educators if there are certain topics they wish to see covered and can quickly adapt if the situation calls for it. While her books tend to deal with heavier social issues, Kate is a very positive person and carries that vibe into her presentations.

Kate often talks about how young she was when she first discovered books and writing, how that love of fiction got her through her teen years, and how she was eventually able to realize her dream of being a writer. Having also self-published, she is able to speak to kids – and adults – not only on how to break into the traditional market, but also how to make it in the indy market as well. She also offers workshops on plotting, character and finding your voice through studying other writers. As a veteran of the publishing industry, she is able to speak on almost any topic if there is a preference.

Some possible topics of discussion based on Kate’s books include Human Trafficking and sexual assault (What Unbreakable Looks Like, 2022 White Pine winner), social media and the public obsession with serial killers (Daughter, 2023 White Pine nominee), and dissociative identity disorder and mental health (Pieces of Me, April 2023 release).

Kate has no requirements of venue, but preference is given to those that allow her to connect and interact with the audience.

Contact Kate to book a visit:

Bow, Erin (Kitchener, ON)

erinbow1 Writers’ Union Member. $400 plus HST for one session; $150 for each additional session in the same area on the same day – can be split between schools. Travel costs waived in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph, and the townships.

Erin writes YA science fiction and fantasy, with a middle grade debut coming in 2019. With multiple awards, she’s considered one of Canada’s rising stars: Quill and Quire calls her “a new master,” and the CBC says she’s “so close to YA superstardom she can probably taste it.” As a presenter she’s down-to-earth and funny, working to give students real answers and emotional honesty.

“I’ve had many novelists visit my classes over the years, but I can honestly say I’ve never seen one connect so well with a teenaged audience. —A.J. Blauer, Acting Head of Literary Arts, Canterbury High School (Ottawa, Ontario)

Continue reading “Bow, Erin (Kitchener, ON)”

Krossing, Karen (Toronto, ON)

Writers’ Union Member. YA and MG fiction. Picture books (nonfiction and fiction). K to 12. Karen’s rate is $250 plus HST for one session, $450 for two, $675 for three, $900 for a full day (4 sessions). Mileage within Toronto may be waived. A virtual visit is $150 plus HST.

Karen Krossing is the author of many books for kids and teens, including picture books One Tiny Bubble and Sour Cakes, and novels Monster vs. Boy, Punch Like a Girl, Bog, and Cut the Lights. She won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for Canada in 2015 and 2023 and has been a finalist for the Ontario Library Association White Pine Award and the Joan F. Kaywell Books Save Lives Award, among other honors. Karen has been conducting book talks and workshops since 2002, and she has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She loves meeting readers and writers of all ages.