Lesley Anne Cowan
Official Website of Literary Fiction Author and Travel Writer.
Write. Travel. Teach.
IN THE PRESS
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"A courageous and powerful exploration of one young woman's heartbreaking struggle against the likelihood of family history repeating itself. An amazing story — told with such unwavering intensity that it's impossible to put this book down" (As She Grows)
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"It's hard not to love writer Lesley Anne Cowan's first novel, As She Grows...bold-faced, unflinching prose.
(As She Grows)
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Something Wicked is a wonderful, gritty, intriguing novel. It's not a novel for the tenderhearted who are looking for a fairytale ending, but it tells the truth about those who succumb to a world of drugs, sex, and alcohol addic
tion and are trying to end a vicious cycle of abuse, because they know death only awaits them.
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“...To say I was completely hooked from the beginning is an understatement; I went way beyond that, even underlining sentences that struck me personally, breaking my hard-and-fast rule of never bending corners in my books or highlighting my pages. But this gritty look at Melissa's life was also inspiring, full of hope, full of self-deprecating humour, that I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end.” (Something Wicked)
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CAMILLA GIBB,
CBC Canadian Literary Award
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MELORA KOEPKE,
Montreal QC Magazine
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Curlingupbythefire.blogspot.com
CHRISTY A LAVERTY, Frecklesthemom.blogspot.com
“It's Ms. Cowan's literary style that really makes this novel exemplary… The figurative language also captures your attention.”
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"Cowan uses the novel form to present the complexties of some key social issueswhile exploring a fascinating character's life."
(As She Grows)
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CHRISTY A LAVERTY, Frecklesthemom.blogspot.com
LINWARD BARCLAY, The Quill & Quire
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BIO
Lesley Anne Cowan is an author of adult and teen literary fiction. She was born in Toronto and studied English and education at McGill University in Montreal. She has travelled extensively and works as a secondary school teacher of troubled youth in Toronto. As She Grows (2003) was shortlisted for the Chapters/Robertson Davies First Novel Prize and is published by Penguin Books. Her second novel (2010), Something Wicked, was selected as finalist for the White Pine Award (Ontario Library Association).
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Lesley recently completed a novel that takes place in Kenya, a country she has returned to and lived in for the past ten years. She is also refining another manuscript that takes place at a 26 day Thai meditation retreat, exploring the limitations of language and vast potential of silence. This novel consists of alternating chapters, interweaving the protagonist's grandfather, a German POW in Canada, imprisonment during WWII.
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TRAVEL BLOG
Travel Blog
A life-long traveller, Lesley has had several travel articles published in National magazines and newspapers. She also has a travel fiction piece entitled "Panik", about a trip to Canada's far north with her father,published in The Antigonish Review in 2010. Lesley is currently working on a non-fiction book about the meaning of travel.