Professor Leonard Romarin will be our guest speaker at the November 20, 2021 breakfast meeting at Canadiana. He will presenting his latest book translation.

Jennifer Maruno  began her publishing career with award winning educational materials for The Peel District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education. She is one of the authors of Explorations, a mathematics program for Addison-Wesley of Canada, and worked with TVO in developing teaching materials for the television show Mathica’s Mathshop. For her contributions to educational writing, she received the Federation of Women Teachers Writing Award, the National Council of Teachers Award of Excellence and The Award of Merit from the National School Public Relations Association. She holds a Masters of Education, Principal’s and Primary Specialists certification and is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature and the Humber School of Writers summer program.Her short stories have appeared in a variety of children’s magazines in Great Britain, United States and Canada. Born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Jennifer came from a book loving family. She worked as a library helper in the old red brick library on Victoria Avenue while attending Valley Way Public school. Her childhood ambition was to have a book with her name on the spine sitting on the shelf.Her first children’s novel, When the Cherry Blossoms Fell won nominations for the Hackmatack and Young Readers of Canada Awards.Educator, researcher and author, Jennifer Maruno knows stories provide much more than entertainment. From the pages of Canadian history, she creates novels empathetic to those who have experienced the darker side of our past. Maruno’s understanding of the importance of cultural identity has brought When the Cherry Blossoms Fell, Cherry Blossom Winter and Cherry Blossom Baseball based on the Japanese Internment and Warbird a novel of early Jesuit life among the Huron people.Details of Kid Soldier, Jennifer’s fourth novel for children, come from her father’s diary. He joined the Canadian Armed Forces under age and set out for England. Enroute Britain declared war. Totem, the story of a boy seeking his identity from the confines of a residential school, was written at a time most necessary to Truth & ReconciliationJennifer lives in Burlington, Ontario with her husband spending her time weeding her David Austin roses, writing and reading to grandchildren.Laurel Keating is an award-winning artist whose illustrations are familiar to Newfoundlanders. With an eye for detail and sympathy for all living things, Laurel brings her characters to life with warmth and humour. Children have delighted in her rich and colourful illustrations in Find Scruncheon and Touton (1 and 2) and Yaffle’s Journey and Full Speed Ahead: Errol’s Bell Island Adventure. She lives in scenic Portugal Cove, which she has called home all her life.

Joe Giampaolo was born in 1963 in Rome, Italy, and moved to Canada as a teenager. He studied philosophy at York University. He speaks Italian and English and studied French, Spanish, Latin, and ancient Greek. Joe has a passion for fountain pens, mountain bikes, cooking, travelling, and the theatre. He lives in Toronto with his family and their two dogs, Suka and Buddy.Joe writes both fiction and non-fiction books about 19th-century England. The Hampshire Stories Series is divided into two sections: Essays, andNovellas and Short Tales.In this collection, readers will find delightful Regency romances, Victorian dramas, gothic tales, ghost stories and essays about the literature of this period. Joe has also published a collection of poems with the title of Deep Craving.

Joe’s favourite 19^thcentury authors are Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Hardy. Favourite contemporary authors include Margaret Atwood, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges.

Essays:

• The Reader’s Companion to the Hampshire Stories Series, Life and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England

-Five-Star Seal, Readers’ Favorite, 2021

-An Amazon #1 Bestseller in the USA and Canada (In several categories)

-An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller in the UK and Italy (In several categories)

• The Reader’s Companion to the World of Jane Austen

-2022 Indies Today Book Awards, Finalist

-An Amazon #1 Bestseller in the USA, the UK and Canada

(Romantic and Gothic Literary Criticism)

-Five-Star Recommendation Badge, Indies Today

Historical Romance:

• Hampshire Stories: A Collection of Tales Set in 19^th Century England

-Gold Medal Winner, Literary Titan, 2020 Book Awards

-Bronze Medal Winner, 2022 Global Book Awards

-An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller in the USA, Canada and Italy (In several categories)

• The Farmer’s Daughter: A Regency Romance

-Five-Star Seal, Readers’ Favorite, 2021

-An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller in the USA, the UK, Canada and Italy (In several categories)

• The Master of Emmet Manor: A Regency Romance

-An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller in the USA, Canada and Italy (In several categories).

Collections:

• The Hampshire Stories Series, Deluxe Edition, Volumes I, II & III
• The Eldritch Chronicles, Wrath of the Sentinel & Other Ghost Tales

Poetry:

 Deep Craving, A Collection of Poems

-Literary Titan Book Awards, Gold Medal, March 2023

-An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller in Canada and Italy (Poetry, English)

Dawn Grimmer is a writer of thousands of scripts for television production and videos for the corporate community. She has also produced numerous TV shows in a variety of genres, from business, to health, nutrition and sports, human interest and children’s programming. Her repertoire also spans several series, including the Toronto based Marilyn Denis Show, formerly on CityTV, and documentaries for various networks,

She has also written web copy and marketing material for corporate clients for decades.

Dawn has been an editor for the past 30 plus years, editing journalists’ and authors’ work, as well as two books of fiction, an online college business course, corporate marketing material, and a major golf magazine.

Her career has also included teaching as she was a professor at Conestoga College in Kitchener where she taught Communications, as well as Professional Writing for Business.

A writer since childhood, Dawn has written a children’s book – the first in a series – and has a novel in the works.

Sharon Crawford

Donna Jean MacKinnon was born in Cape Breton, emigrating to Upper Canada as an impressionable child. She attended Victoria College, U of T, and graduated with a degree in English and Near Eastern history.  Since then Donna Jean has paid the bills as a social worker, high school teacher, buyer at the Hudson’s Bay Co., antiques dealer and freelance writer before surfacing at the Toronto Star. There she toiled as a reporter, columnist and features’ writer for 21 years.  She wrote about everything from murder to interior design to medical break-throughs.

Donna Jean’s book NEWSGIRLS: Gutsy Pioneers in Canada’s Newsrooms is the result of 20 years of interviews and collecting every morsel of information about each reporter featured in the book. Donna Jean knew each Newsgirl while she and they were working at major newspapers. Thus the book is based on personal interviews and not dusty archival material.

Jennifer Maruno  began her publishing career with award winning educational materials for The Peel District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education. She is one of the authors of Explorations, a mathematics program for Addison-Wesley of Canada, and worked with TVO in developing teaching materials for the television show Mathica’s Mathshop. For her contributions to educational writing, she received the Federation of Women Teachers Writing Award, the National Council of Teachers Award of Excellence and The Award of Merit from the National School Public Relations Association. She holds a Masters of Education, Principal’s and Primary Specialists certification and is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature and the Humber School of Writers summer program.Her short stories have appeared in a variety of children’s magazines in Great Britain, United States and Canada. Born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Jennifer came from a book loving family. She worked as a library helper in the old red brick library on Victoria Avenue while attending Valley Way Public school. Her childhood ambition was to have a book with her name on the spine sitting on the shelf.Her first children’s novel, When the Cherry Blossoms Fell won nominations for the Hackmatack and Young Readers of Canada Awards.Educator, researcher and author, Jennifer Maruno knows stories provide much more than entertainment. From the pages of Canadian history, she creates novels empathetic to those who have experienced the darker side of our past. Maruno’s understanding of the importance of cultural identity has brought When the Cherry Blossoms Fell, Cherry Blossom Winter and Cherry Blossom Baseball based on the Japanese Internment and Warbird a novel of early Jesuit life among the Huron people.Details of Kid Soldier, Jennifer’s fourth novel for children, come from her father’s diary. He joined the Canadian Armed Forces under age and set out for England. Enroute Britain declared war. Totem, the story of a boy seeking his identity from the confines of a residential school, was written at a time most necessary to Truth & ReconciliationJennifer lives in Burlington, Ontario with her husband spending her time weeding her David Austin roses, writing and reading to grandchildren.Laurel Keating is an award-winning artist whose illustrations are familiar to Newfoundlanders. With an eye for detail and sympathy for all living things, Laurel brings her characters to life with warmth and humour. Children have delighted in her rich and colourful illustrations in Find Scruncheon and Touton (1 and 2) and Yaffle’s Journey and Full Speed Ahead: Errol’s Bell Island Adventure. She lives in scenic Portugal Cove, which she has called home all her life.