Lori Knutson made her first visit to Prince Edward Island in 1994. A born and raised prairie girl, this writer’s imagination was sparked by the legends and history of the Island, especially those stories surrounding West Point and the Northumberland Strait. The possibilities for stories waiting to be written seemed endless as she gazed from the top of the West Point Lighthouse and out over the red shoreline and foam-tipped ocean waves. It was there, in that moment, that The Ghost of Northumberland Strait was conceived. Although she returned several times to P.E.I. as a visitor, she has remained a prairie girl living in Alberta, except for the one year she spent straight out of Fairview High School at the University of Victoria. Here she completed her first year of a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She returned to her home province and the University of Alberta to finish her degree and to take an After Degree in the Bachelor of Education program offered there. In her seven plus years spent as faith columnist for the Daily Herald-Tribune in Grande Prairie, the writer often put to paper her experiences with kids and drew on the special way they see the world. In the author’s opinion, those stories are the most amusing and eye-opening in her body of newspaper work. When her first book, a devotional called Sacred Simplicities was published in 2004, it contained some stories inspired by the unique views held by children. Besides being a teacher, Lori has worked as a beekeeper, an interpreter at an historical village, a United Church Lay preacher and a bookseller. In the life of a writer, every experience adds to the creative fodder, and out of these opportunities, Charly Pederson and the ghostly Katherine O’Leary were born. Lori lives in Hughenden, Alberta, three hours southeast of Edmonton.