In the 1980’s, I was a collaborative play-maker and story-teller in Fringe theatres across Canada. I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation, (Ordering Chaos, a history of the Canadian Fringe Phenomenon) and became a ‘gypsy academic’ when the English Dept. at the University of British Columbia hired me to teach. I’ve voyaged around the world three times and 900 miles up the Amazon River teaching with a U.S. program called Semester at Sea. I’ve lived and worked in 6 countries: Mexico, Honduras Grand Cayman Island, Guatemala, Cuba and Belize, and I traversed the North American continent east to west and north to south and back again by motorcycle, bus and train. When I turned 50, I celebrated by walking for fifty days across Northern Spain – alone. And now I live peacefully on a tiny Caribbean island off the coast of Belize where I have a little guest house and I teach online undergraduate courses in Writing and Canadian studies. And now, I have time to write about the stories I’ve heard, and the stories I’ve lived.
