Jill Downie is an acclaimed Canadian novelist, biographer, and playwright whose versatile writing spans award-winning historical non-fiction and contemporary island mysteries. Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) to a British Colonial official, she was educated in England and Guernsey before studying languages at the Sorbonne and Bristol University Amazon.ca. After immigrating to Canada, she raised a family, supply-taught high school languages, and transitioned into full-time writing. Downie vaulted into national literary prominence with her 1996 biography, A Passionate Pen: The Life and Times of Faith Fenton, which won the Drummer General's Award Dundurn for its stylish, meticulous portrait of a pioneering, unconventional Victorian-era Canadian woman journalist Goodreads. She expanded her non-fiction accolades by winning the Hamilton and Region Arts Council Literary Award for Storming the Castle Dundurn. A highly adaptable storyteller, she has seen her plays staged at prominent Toronto theatre festivals Writers' Union and has authored several historical novels Writers' Union. She is also widely celebrated for creating the Guernsey-based Moretti and Falla police procedural mystery series, which launched with Daggers and Men's Smiles. She currently resides in Ancaster, Ontario.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
