It is teeming rain outside and brightly coloured leaves are covering the streets and lawns. This is fall in Vancouver! As long as you don’t mind carrying an umbrella with you, it’s a great time to be in this city.

One of my favourite fall events is the Vancouver Writers Festival, now in its 30th year. This afternoon I heard some wonderful children’s authors speaking about their books on child refugees, past and present. The young students in the audience were mesmerized!

And in a couple of days, I will go to hear a panel of authors who have penned new memoirs, always a riveting session. More on that later.

If you are on the west coast, I hope you are staying warm and dry. It’s wet out there! And if you are somewhere else, I hope you are having a great fall, too.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the festivities at Word Vancouver (the west coast version of Word on the Street) and what a grand day it was. As always, it was wonderful to see the range of books published by authors who live here.

The highlight was hearing some of my colleagues talk about their new works. I especially enjoyed seeing Irene N. Watts (author) and Kathryn Shoemaker (illustrator) speak about their graphic novel, Seeking Refuge — the story of a young girl, Marianne, who finds refuge in England after being rescued from the Nazis on the Kindertransport. (Irene helped me enormously on my own book on this topic, Rescuing the Children.)

I also stopped by the booth of our local organization,  CWILL BC (Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia), and was happy to see their presence there. At the top of this post, is the lovely CWILL banner designed and drawn by our very own Mary Jane Muir. (If you are ever looking for an author or illustrator to visit your classroom, you can search for one on the CWILL website.)

It was an excellent day to celebrate books and writing in our book-loving community!

I’ve often said if I weren’t a writer, I’d like to be a cook. Spending time in the kitchen is one of my favourite things to do. I find it both relaxing and creative — especially when I am baking pies (my specialty) for family and friends.

For years, I’ve wanted to combine my two of my favourite pastimes: writing and cooking, and now I’m happy to say, I am hard at work on a cookbook for kids. It turns out that writing a cookbook isn’t as easy as I might have thought. Each recipe requires much testing and retesting, both on my own and with the kids in my family, who provide me with a lot of great feedback and inspiration.

And helping me along are the books on food that I am currently reading: The Cassoulet that Saved Our Marriage, which is a wonderful collection of essays about people and their relationship with food and family; and Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Roadtrip, an account of two women who spent five months camping across Canada, eating and talking to locals about their favourite foods.

My own book, Cooking with Bear, which combines a story and 20 recipes won’t be out for some time, but it continues to be a fun and interesting project. More on this later.

In the meantime, I can recommend both of the books noted here. I’m certain they will provide you with hours of happy reading and eating!