Susan Juby

Last updated
Susan Juby
Born (1969-03-30) March 30, 1969 (age 55)
Ponoka, Alberta
OccupationNovelist
NationalityCanadian
GenreComedic
Notable works Alice, I Think , Republic of Dirt, Mindful of Murder
SpouseJames Waring
Website
susanjuby.com

Susan Juby (born March 30, 1969) [1] is a Canadian writer. She is currently residing in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where she is a professor of creative writing at Vancouver Island University.

Contents

Juby is known for her comedic writing. Her first series started with Alice, I Think (2000), which was adapted into the television series Alice, I Think by The Comedy Network.

Background

Juby was born in Ponoka, Alberta, [1] and later moved to Smithers, British Columbia at the age of six. [1]

Juby initially attended fashion design school, but dropped out after several months. [1] She subsequently started a degree in English literature at the University of Toronto, [1] transferring to the University of British Columbia after two years. [1] After graduating she became an editor at a book publishing company called Hartley and Marks. [1]

Career

Juby began her first book as a journal which she wrote on the bus on the way to work and at a local coffee shop. Thistledown published her first book Alice, I Think in 2000. [2] The book was named one of the essential 40 young adult novels by Rolling Stone Magazine. [3]

Juby completed a master's degree in publishing (MPub) from Simon Fraser University in 2002. [4] After publishing Alice, I Think (2000), HarperCollins offered her a contract for three books. Her second book Miss Smithers was published in 2004. [2] To complete the trilogy of Alice, I Think all under one publisher, the original book was bought by HarperCollins. Her third book under this contact was Alice McLeod: Realist at Last, published in 2005. [2] The Comedy Network developed Alice, I Think , a television sitcom based on the novel of the same name. The first episode aired in 2006. [5]

Juby went on to write Another Kind of Cowboy (2007) and a young adult detective novel, Getting the Girl (2008). [6] In 2010, Viking Canada published Nice Recovery, Juby's memoir tracing the time between her experience with teenage alcoholism until her sobriety at age 20. [7]

HarperCollins published Juby's next book in 2011, Home to Woefield (also known as The Woefield Poultry Collective in Canada). This was her first book aimed at an adult audience. [4] She would later write a sequel, Republic of Dirt (2015). [4] In 2016, Republic of Dirt won the Stephen Leacock Award. [8]

Other books by Juby include the dystopian young adult novel Bright's Light (2012), as well as The Truth Commission (2015), and The Fashion Committee (2017), a pair of young adult novels set in an art high school. Her first novel for middle grade readers is called Me Three (2022). Her first mystery novel for adults is called Mindful of Murder. The book features Helen Thorpe, a former buddhist nun turned butler, who finds herself embroiled in the mystery of who killed her former employer. Mindful of Murder debuted at #1 in Canada's independent bookstores list of bestsellers.

Juby was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2014. [9]

On February 22, 2020, [10] Juby read excerpts from two as-yet-unpublished works at the Vancouver Island Regional Library's Nanaimo Harbourfront branch. Mindful of Murder is Juby's first crime novel for adults. Me 3 is a middle-grade novel that addresses the #MeToo movement from a child's perspective. [11]

Personal life

Juby is an environmental rights activist in her community. [12] She is a creative writing professor at Vancouver Island University, in Nanaimo, British Columbia. [13]

Published works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robertson Davies</span> Canadian novelist

William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.

Canadian literature is written in several languages including English, French, and to some degree various Indigenous languages. It is often divided into French- and English-language literatures, which are rooted in the literary traditions of France and Britain, respectively. The earliest Canadian narratives were of travel and exploration.

Jack Hodgins is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Critically acclaimed, among his best received works is Broken Ground (1998), a historical novel set after the First World War, for which he received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and many other accolades.

Sheree Lynn Fitch is a Canadian writer and literacy advocate. Known primarily for her children's books, she has also published poetry and fiction for adults.

The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, also known as the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour or just the Leacock Medal, is an annual Canadian literary award presented for the best book of humour written in English by a Canadian writer, published or self-published in the previous year. The silver medal, designed by sculptor Emanuel Hahn, is a tribute to well-known Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) and is accompanied by a cash prize of $25,000 (CAD). It is presented in the late spring or early summer each year, during a banquet ceremony in or near Leacock’s hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vancouver Island University</span> Canadian public university

Vancouver Island University is a Canadian public university serving Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia. Malaspina College opened in 1969. The main campus is located in Nanaimo, with regional campuses in Duncan and Powell River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silver Donald Cameron</span> Canadian author and journalist (1937–2020)

Silver Donald Cameron was a Canadian journalist, author, playwright, and university teacher whose writing focused on social justice, nature, and the environment. His 15 books of non-fiction dealt with everything from history and politics to education and community development.

<i>Alice, I Think</i> (novel) 2000 novel by Susan Juby

Alice, I Think is the first in a trilogy of comic novels written by Susan Juby. It was first published in 2000. It is set in Smithers, British Columbia and describes the struggle of a young woman, Alice Macleod, as she matures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Pullinger</span> Canadian novelist and author of digital fiction, and a Professor of Creative Writing

Kate Pullinger is a Canadian novelist and author of digital fiction, and a professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, England.

Andrea MacPherson is a Canadian poet and novelist.

Alison Watt is a Canadian writer, and painter born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Watt grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. She studied biology (BSC) at Simon Fraser University and Creative Writing (MFA) at the University of British Columbia. She has worked as Education Coordinator at the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, a tour leader in Central and South America, and a naturalist aboard the west coast schooner Maple Leaf, sailing among British Columbia's Gulf Islands, Haida Gwaii, the Great Bear Rainforest, and Alaska. She has taught art to adults since 1995, in her studio on Protection Island, Nanaimo, BC, in other venues. Since 2020 she has offered courses online, through her business ARTWORK ARTPLAY.

Barbara Anne Cameron was a Canadian novelist, poet, screenwriter, short story and children's book writer. She legally changed her name from her birth name, Barbara Cameron, to Cam Hubert and later changed her name from Cam Hubert to Anne Cameron. She has written under these names.

Wendy Philips is a Canadian author. She grew up in Kamloops, British Columbia, and wrote her first book at the age of 11, and completed degrees in journalism, English, education and a children's literature degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Her past jobs have included journalism, bookbinding and teaching English. She has lived in Lesotho, Ottawa, South Africa and Australia, but currently lives in Richmond, British Columbia with her husband, son and daughter. Phillips currently works as a teacher-librarian at MacNeill Secondary School in Richmond, BC. Phillips is also an author of young adult fiction, whose first book Fishtailing won the 2010 Governor General's Award for children's literature.

The Nanaimo Daily News was a Canadian daily newspaper published weekdays in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia for 141 years until ceasing publication in January 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Kuipers</span> British writer (born 1979)

Alice Kuipers is a British author living in Saskatchewan, Canada who is best known for her young adult novels. Life on the Refrigerator Door won the Grand Prix de Viarmes, the Livrentête Prize, the Redbridge Teenage Book Award in 2008 and the Saskatchewan First Book Award in 2007, was narrated as an audio book by Amanda Seyfried and Dana Delany, and has been adapted for theater in England, France and Japan. 40 Things I Want To Tell You won a Saskatchewan Book Award for Young Adult Literature in 2013. The Worst Thing She Ever Did won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book in 2011.

Ian C. Johnston is a Canadian author and translator, a retired university-college instructor and a professor emeritus at Vancouver Island University.

Ellen R. White of the Snuneymuxw First Nation is a Canadian aboriginal elder, author, and academic who has been recognized with a national Order of Canada and provincial Order of British Columbia.

Lynne Bowen is a Canadian non-fiction writer, historian, professor, and journalist, best known for her popular historical books about Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Over the years, Bowen has won awards such as the Eaton's British Columbia Book Award (1983), the Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Writing British Columbia History (1987), and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (1993).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disappearance of Lisa Marie Young</span> Nanaimo BC woman missing since 2002

Lisa Marie Young was a 21-year-old Indigenous Canadian who disappeared from Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada on June 30, 2002. She had attended a local nightclub and two house parties, before accepting a ride to a fast-food restaurant, from a man, Christopher William Adair, she and her friends met earlier at the club. Although Young has never been found, her disappearance is being investigated as a homicide.

Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Dave Jenkinson, "Susan Juby" Archived 2015-06-30 at the Wayback Machine . CM Magazine, May 11, 2005.
  2. 1 2 3 Robert J. Wiersema, "Tales of Teenage Misfits" Archived 2014-02-26 at the Wayback Machine . Quill & Quire , February 2005.
  3. "40 Best YA Novels". Rolling Stone . 22 May 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 "Biography".
  5. "Alice, I Think". IMDb .
  6. "Books".
  7. "Getting better all the time". 13 August 2010.
  8. "Nanaimo author wins Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour". CTV Vancouver Island, June 12, 2016.
  9. https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/College%20Citations%202014.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  10. "Author Talk and Reading with Susan Juby, author of the ALICE, I THINK series and THE WOEFIELD POULTRY COLLECTIVE". Vancouver Island Regional Library. Retrieved 2020-03-06.[ permanent dead link ]
  11. 1 2 "Author and VIU professor Susan Juby previewing pair of unpublished books". Nanaimo News Bulletin. 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  12. Holmes, Ian. "Nanaimo Council rejects Linley Valley housing proposal". Nanaimo News Now. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  13. "Susan Juby | Creative Writing and Journalism | VIU". ah.viu.ca. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  14. "66 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in spring 2022". CBC Books, January 11, 2022.