Paper Trail: Writing and Walking by Sarah Ellis

Photo credit: Thelonius Mthombeni

Join award-winning author, teacher and librarian Sarah Ellis for the upcoming 38th Annual Helen E. Stubbs Memorial Lecture at our Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books.

The word that best describes Sarah's career in writing is "meander." In this presentation she will tell stories about her work and her wanders, including the pleasures of flaneuring, both on the page and on her feet, the winding journey from grade four essay to substack via a long detour in children's fiction, her beloved companions of the road, the importance of good socks and good colleagues, the inevitable, scary and productive experience of getting lost, and the odd tendency of humans to walk counterclockwise when left to wander freely (true fact!). Come prepared for detours.

Sarah Ellis is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books for children and young adults. In 2013 she was awarded the B.C. Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. She is a three-time Canadian nominee for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Having retired as a children’s librarian and then retired from college teaching she is now writing and reading fulltime in the rain in Vancouver, sharing her bookish thoughts online at "Wild Reading" on substack. Her latest book for children is As Glenn as Can Be illustrated by Nancy Vo, published by Groundwood Books and she has a recent adult memoir, My Year in Fairyland: Grief, MAID and a Lifetime of Reading published by Stonehewer Books.