This year's poetry book by an Island writer is by former P.E.I. bookseller Pam Martin; this is her first book. As a child Pam Martin had four very sudden and unexpected encounters with death. These experiences shaped her emotional life as she struggled to understand them and to find beauty in a world that seemed fraught with peril. The poems also examine, with delicacy and humour, the world she encountered as a teenager, a social worker and a wife.

Pam Martin has had a varied career which includes working at Ottawa’s first coffee house, Le Hibou, modelling in Toronto, managing a bookstore in Victoria, B.C., tree planting in PEI, being an entrepreneur (The Good Life Health Food Store and The Reading Well Bookstore), Level 3 Foster Parent, student, Social Worker and of course, poet. Recently, she spent five years in La Ronge, northern Saskatchewan where she worked as a Mental Health Social Worker and fell in love with the north. Pam, her husband Reji and three dogs live in Charlottetown where she is currently working on some northern poems and a novel set in, of all places, East Texas

Pam Martin's profile page