• Reading age: 15 to 18

Shane Joseph's profile page

Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. He began writing as a teenager living in Sri Lanka and has never stopped. Redemption in Paradise, his first novel, was published in 2004. He has completed three other novels, After the Flood - a dystopian story set in the aftermath of global warming, The Ulysses Man - an odyssey of the immigrant experience in Canada, and In the Shadow of the Conquistador - a tale of romance and redemption in the Peruvian Andes. His short stories on Canadian themes have appeared in Existere, in three Canadian anthologies and in literary journals in Sri Lanka and India.

His career stints include: stage and radio actor, pop musician, encyclopaedia salesman, lathe machine operator, airline executive, travel agency manager, vice president of a global financial services company and management consultant.

Self taught, with four degrees under his belt obtained through distance education, Shane is an avid traveller and has visited one country for every year of his life and lived in four of them. He fondly recalls incidents during his travels as real lessons he could never have learned in school: husky riding in Finland with no training, trekking the Inca Trail in Peru through an unending rainstorm, hitch hiking in Australia without a map, escaping a wild elephant in Zambia, and being stranded without money in Denmark, are some of his memories.

After immigrating (twice), raising a family, building a career, and experiencing life's many highs and lows, Shane has carved out a niche in Cobourg, Ontario with his wife Sarah, where he continues to write stories and play his guitar.

Shane Joseph, believes in the gift of second chances. He feels that he has lived many lives in just a single lifetime, always starting from scratch with only the lessons from the past to draw upon. His novels and stories reflect the redemptive power of acceptance and forgiveness. "Writing fiction is an avenue to record these experiences, to mine art within the struggle of life, and, even though I may never achieve it, to pursue a holy and noble grail."