If you'd like to learn more about Lucy and Persian carpets (they are EXQUISITE) there's an interesting story about them on her website. 

Watch! Lucy discuss her writing process; she breaks it down into three chunks.
1. The Prewriting Process
2. The Writing Process
3. The Editing Process
She does a fabulous job (you can tell she was an educator)!​

Hi! My name is crystal fletcher and welcome to all about canadian books. In continuing with the discussion about what’s going on in the Canadian book industry today’s guest is Eric Walters.

​Eric was a social worker turned educator, he’s a coach, an award-winning, best-selling author of young adult and children’s picture books. He has written a whooping 125+ books. Has over 100 awards including the Order of Canada and the Governor General's Literary Award. Eric’s books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, he has presented to more than 2 million students from North America, Japan, Kenya and Germany.

To promote Canadian authors and their books Eric spearheaded the ‘I Read Canadian Day,’ which is a national day of celebration of Canadian books for young people and the focus of our discussion.  

​Hi! My name is crystal fletcher and welcome to all about canadian books. This week, I’m hosting a special series that takes a peak at what’s going on in the Canadian book industry.

Before I introduce this week’s guest…if you LOVE books and the stories behind them, be sure to subscribe to my channel. Interviews are posted bi-weekly, and you don’t want to miss them. My guest today is Noelle Allen. She’s the owner and publisher of Wolsak and Wynn an award-winning literary press based in Hamilton, Ontario. She is also the past-chair of the Literary Press Group, gritlit: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival and of the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Advisory Committee, where she managed the Hamilton Literary Awards.

Currently Noelle is also the essay editor for the Hamilton Review of Books and manages the literary programing for Super Crawl, Hamilton’s largest outdoor arts festival.

We discussed, her career highlight (Noelle has been in the industry for 3 decades), manuscripts that grab her attention, the challenges of being an independent publisher in Canada before and amid COVID-19.

**CORRECTION: Apparently, I did not have enough coffee as I referred to 'independent' publishing as 'indie.' OMG! And, Noelle was very Canadian and did not correct me! I am SO embarrassed and BIG apologies. OMG!**

To check out Wolsak & Wynn's releases and to see what's new

To read Susan's article in Now magazine

To visit Susan's website

During our interview, I referred to the book industry having a bit of a silver lining at the end of 2020 because the Department of Canadian Heritage injected a one time $10 million into it. This program allowed independent Canadian book distributors to offer incentives to retail bookstores to increase their stocks of Canadian books. It worked. 

Canadian-authored books accounted for almost a fifth of all book sales in 2020 in independent book stores across our country. Click here, to read the report.

​Up next, Noelle Allen, owner and publisher, Wolsak and Wynn.

I love that The Globe and Mail describes this romantic comedy as "a warm hug of a book." To learn more about Damhnait  

Many writers are familiar with rejection (I know I am). In her book's acknowledgements Damhnait mentions that "countless rejections and near misses," led to her putting her manuscript on the shelf. For fellow writers out there who are feeling a little discouraged about the query process don't miss Damhnait share her story about what led to her taking that manuscript off the shelf.