*Make sure to go on Twitter today and tweet to @readingcampaign with #whatdidyoureadtoday to help raise money for the National Reading Campaign and for a chance to win one of ten Kobo’s!
Continuing our Q&A series in celebration of the National Reading Campaign, today’s guest author is Jennifer Craig.
In olden days Jennifer Craig was born in Yorkshire, England. She grew up in war time, trained as a nurse at Leeds Infirmary, emigrated to Canada, got married, had two children, went back to school, earned a Ph.D, became an academic and wrote academic twaddle. Enlightenment came when she moved to Nelson in 1994 and attended creative writing course. Her first book, Yes Sister, No Sister: a Leeds Nurse in the 1950s, a memoir about training as a nurse, was published in 2002 after 27 rejections. In 2010 it was re-published for the mass paperback market, moved straight into The Times bestseller list for 17 weeks and has sold 142,000 copies.
She has also published Jabs, Jenner & Juggernauts: a Look at Vaccination and has two finished novels waiting for perceptive publishers.
She lives in Nelson with a Bichon Frise and is fortunate to have two of her five grandchildren near by.
Q: What are you reading right now?
A: Ken Follett’s ‘Winter of the World’, Nancy Kress: ‘Beginnings, Middles and Ends’ in the series on the Elements of Fiction Writing, Andreas Moritz: ‘Vaccine-nation: Poisoning the Population One Shot at a Time’, and I’m listening to an audio-book, Ken Follett’s ‘Pillars of the Earth.’
Q: Are there any books that changed your life?
A: Germaine Greer, “The Female Eunuch.”
Q: Dog ear-er or non-dog-ear-er?
A: Definitely NO. Appalling abuse of a book.
Q: Your favourite fictional hero and/or villain?
A: I assume you mean hero or heroine?? Elizabeth Bennett.
Q: Anything else you want to say about reading?
A: Parents, don’t let your children watch someone else’s ideas of for example, Winnie the Pooh with an American accent yet, until they have read (many times) the original author.
Thanks Jenny! And of course I meant hero or heroine – but good catch. 🙂
Tomorrow we’ll be peeking at the bookshelves of Douglas Smith.
~Kristene
Jennifer, I totally agree with you on the Winnie the Pooh comment. Those were my favourite books as a young reader, and the movies don’t even come close to capturing the wonder of the original prose or the characters.