Join us as we celebrate 50 years of excellent books from Harbour Publishing. Howard White, Grant Lawrence and Betty Keller bring their unique perspectives to the inner workings of this independent publisher. This event is moderated by Andreas Schroeder.
Betty Keller is a teacher, editor and author who has been mentoring writers for 35 years. She has authored or co-authored seventeen books, including biographies, histories, plays and novels. She is a founder of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts and the recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in BC and the Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award for significant contributions to the BC book industry.
Grant Lawrence is an award-winning writer, musician, broadcaster, and live event host. He is the author of four bestselling books for adults: Adventures in Solitude, The Lonely End of the Rink, Dirty Windshields, and his most recent number one BC bestseller, Return to Solitude. He is also the author of the children’s books Bailey the Bat and the Tangled Moose and the newly released Adventures in Desolation Sound. Lawrence is the host of the CBC Music Top 20, the lead singer of the internationally acclaimed garage band The Smugglers, a Canadian Screen Award winner, and a former newspaper columnist. He is also a goalie for the Vancouver Flying Vees beer league hockey team. Grant Lawrence is married to musician Jill Barber and they live in Vancouver, BC, with their two children.
Howard White was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat, Spilsbury’s Coast, Writing in the Rain, Here on the Coast, The Sunshine Coast and A Mysterious Humming Noise. White has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association’s Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Moderator Andreas Schroeder is an award-winning author of more than 20 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young-adult nonfiction. He has won both a National Magazine Award and the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Best Investigative Journalism prize. He was only the fourth recipient of the Graeme Gibson Award for his 33 years of service to Canada’s writers, first leading the 12-year crusade to achieve Canada’s Public Lending Right program, and then administering it for over a decade once it was in place.
