Imagining Ancient Women

Annabel Lyon, a Vancouver-based fiction writer and teacher, is the author of several books, including her acclaimed historical novel, The Golden Mean (2009), which was nominated for all three of Canada's major fiction prizes: the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for English language fiction and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, which she won. Curtis Gillespie has written three books, The Progress of an Object in Motion, Someone Like That, and Playing Through, and his journalism is widely published. He has won numerous awards for his fiction and non-fiction, including the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and three National Magazine Awards. His latest novel is Crown Shyness. He lives in Edmonton with his wife and two daughters.

"[Imagining Ancient Women] lays out the processes of researching historical sources for useable material in creating believable characters, backgrounds, scenarios, and stories that contemporary readers can readily relate to. Informed, informative, insightful, scholarly, 'reader friendly', of immense and immediate practical value, Imagining Ancient Women is highly recommended for personal, professional, academic, and community library Literary Studies and Writer Reference collections and supplemental reading lists." Wisconsin Bookwatch, May 2012 "[This public lecture] gives first-person insight into the golden aura of fiction, the place where reality is transformed and enhanced by visceral imagination... Her first-person approach to history with human perspective gives empirical reality to her characters, male and female, living in the moment. Her Kreisel lecture not only provides insight into her process, but is a valuable primer on writing real history through the telling of personal stories." Linda Rogers, The Malahat Review, Winter 2012