Louise Penny
Taken by Lesa Holstine, March 2008

Louise Penny

Author of Still Life

MembersReviewsRatingFavorited   Events   
1,324151 (4.05)00

Books by Louise Penny

combine/separate works?

Members

Related tags

Events on LibraryThing Local

Add an event

Louise Penny has 1 upcoming event.

Phoenix Books and Cafe: Louise Penny (December 7 at 19:00)
Louise Penny will read from and autograph her newest Inspector Gamache mystery, The Brutal Telling. The Brutal Telling is a New York Times bestseller and an IndieBound IndieNext Pick - and has earned glowing reviews from Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, and other publications: "With an intricate, almost ... (more)mythic plot, superb characters and rich, dark humor Penny...continues to deepen and modernize the traditional "village mystery," says People Magazine! "Penny...is a world-class storyteller," lauds The Kirkus Review. "This superb novel will appeal to readers who enjoy sophisticated literary mysteries," adds Library Journal. Louise Penny is an award-winning journalist who worked for many years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Her bestselling first mystery, Still Life, was the winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards; and her second, A Fatal Grace, won the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel. She lives in a small village south of Montréal where she writes, skis, and volunteers.
Added by phoenixbooksvt.

Louise Penny has 6 past events. (show)

Common KnowledgeShare what you know.

view history Creative Commons License ?
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical name
Legal name
Other names
Date of birth
Date of death
Burial location
Gender
Nationality
Places of residence
Education
Occupations
Relationships
Organizations
Awards and honors
Agents
Short biography
I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Toronto in 1958 and became a journalist and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, specializing in hard news and current affairs. My first job was in Toronto and then moved to Thunder Bay at the far tip of Lake Superior, in Ontario. It was a great place to learn the art and craft of radio and interviewing, and listening. That was the key. A good interviewer rarely speaks, she listens. Closely and carefully. I think the same is true of writers.

From Thunder Bay I moved to Winnipeg to produce documentaries and host the CBC afternoon show. It was a hugely creative time with amazingly creative people. But I decided I needed to host a morning show, and so accepted a job in Quebec City. The advantage of a morning show is that it has the largest audience, the disadvantage is having to rise at 4am.

But Quebec City offered other advantages that far outweighed the ungodly hour. It's staggeringly beautiful and almost totally French and I wanted to learn. Within weeks I'd called Quebecers 'good pumpkins', ordered flaming mice in a restaurant, for dessert naturally, and asked a taxi driver to 'take me to the war, please.' He turned around and asked 'Which war exactly, Madame?' Fortunately elegant and venerable Quebec City has a very tolerant and gentle nature and simply smiled at me.

From there the job took me to Montreal, where I ended my career on CBC Radio's noon programme.

In my mid-thirties the most remarkable thing happened. I fell in love with Michael, the head of hematology at the Montreal Children's Hospital. He'd go on to hold the first named chair in pediatric hematology in Canada, something I take full credit for, out of his hearing.

It's an amazing and blessed thing to find love later in life. It was my first marriage and his second. He'd lost his first wife to cancer a few years earlier and that had just about killed him. Sad and grieving we met and began a gentle and tentative courtship, both of us slightly fearful, but overcome with the rightness of it. And overcome with gratitude that this should happen to us and deeply grateful to the family and friends who supported us.

Eleven years later we live in an old United Empire Loyalist brick home in the country, surrounded by maple woods and mountains and smelly dogs.

There are times when I'm in tears writing. Not because I'm so moved by my own writing, but out of gratitude that I get to do this. In my life as a journalist I covered deaths and accidents and horrible events, as well as the quieter disasters of despair and poverty. Now, every morning I go to my office, put the coffee on, fire up the computer and visit my imaginary friends, Gamache and Beauvoir and Clara and Peter. What a privilege it is to write. I hope you enjoy reading the books as much as I enjoy writing them.
Disambiguation notice

Is this you?

If you're an author, consider becoming an official LibraryThing Author.

Member ratings

Average: (4.05)
0.5
1 3
1.5
2 12
2.5 8
3 65
3.5 39
4 205
4.5 52
5 127

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alumn

Louise Penny's book The Brutal Telling was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Sign up to get pre-publication copies of books.

Author Disambiguation

How many authors?

Louise Penny is currently considered a "single author." If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author.

This entry includes…

  • Louise Penny

Combine with…

What?

Q: What is this feature for/why is it necessary?

A: Because LibraryThing draws from so many different libraries, it can't enforce a single name for a given author. "Also known as" lets LibraryThing users combine author's names easily, so collections match up and everything runs smoothly.

Q: Can I combine with an author not suggested above?

A: Yes you can.

Q: I know an author is separate, but someone keeps combining them! Can I take a name off the combination list?

A: Yes you can.

Look up! Everything in the "Combine with..." section now has a link to "never combine." Use this feature wisely. "Marc Twain" may be idiotic, but misspelling should still be combined. "Mark Twain" and "Edward Gibbon" should not.

Q: What authors have already been slated to "never combine" with this author?

A: No authors.

Q: I am the someone and I'm right!

A: Take it to the Combiners group.

Become a member to do this.

 

Help/FAQs | About | Privacy/Terms | Blog | Contact | LibraryThing.com | APIs | WikiThing | Common Knowledge | 46,148,685 books!