Joyce Wayne crafts the compelling narrative of Last Night of the World, knowing full well the world of Soviet spy Freda Linton. She herself grew up in a family where her father was a devoted member of the Communist Party of Canada until he lost his faith in the Bolsheviks.
Joyce has intimate knowledge and insights into the characters found in Last Night of the World.
She grew up a “red diaper baby” with direct experience and understanding of many of the characters in her novel. She is uniquely situated to write about this transformative period of Canadian history and the forces and personalities who provoked the beginning of the Cold War.
“I’ve heard tales of Igor Gouzenko’s defection from the time I was a child,” Joyce says. “Last Night of the World is the book I’ve always wanted to write. It is the story of the spark that ignited the Cold War from the point of view of the Canadian-Soviet spies exposed by Gouzenko, and who were charged with treason by the Canadian government. When I watched the T.V. series, The Americans, I knew the time was right to tell this story.”
Joyce Wayne is an award-winning literary journalist, a former editor at Quill & Quire and the author of the historical novel The Cook’s Temptation (Mosaic Press, 2013). For many years, she was the head of the journalism program at Sheridan College where she launched the Sheridan Centre for Internationally Trained Individuals. Joyce was a winner of the Diaspora Dialogues contest for short fiction and has been awarded the Fiona Mee Award for literary journalism. She lives in Oakville with her husband where she runs writing workshops for the Public Library and writes the bi-weekly blog RetirementMatters.ca .