| Cathy Jewison was
born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spent her formative years in Regina,
Saskatchewan. Her Prairie roots undoubtedly explain her horror of
large trees, looming mountains, and the damp winter cold that plagues
so many parts of Canada.
After completing an undergrad degree in
journalism and communications at the University of Regina, she worked
as a newspaper copy editor in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In 1986 she moved to Yellowknife,
Northwest Territories, where she began a triple life. |
 |
| First
came her day job. During her first few months in Yellowknife, Cathy
worked as a reporter at the local newspaper. In 1987 she became a
government communications officer, an occupation she followed for 20
years, with the occasional foray into policy work. Since the spring of
2007, she has been the executive director of the
NWT Federal Council.
The move to Yellowknife also
coincided with an obsession with education. Once she was living a
thousand miles from the closest university, Cathy was struck by a
sudden urge to get an
English degree. After ten years of
correspondence study, she finished it. The fever to accumulate
credentials had set in, however, and she also ended up with a
certificate in adult and continuing education, and a
master of arts in
the humanities. It should surprise no one to learn that, as a child,
Cathy was a compulsive acquirer of Brownie badges.
Finally, she took up creative
writing. Although Cathy had claimed for years that she intended to
become an author, it was the quirkiness of life in Yellowknife jolted
her into action. She dabbled in poetry and drama, and considered
writing the Great Canadian Novel. Suffering from exhaustion and a
shrinking attention span, she settled on the short story as her
preferred literary form. Her work has appeared in
Storyteller magazine, Northern Writes 7, Winners’
Circle 10,
Imprints 11, and
North by North Wit: New Canadian Humour Writing.
Cathy won the 2002 Larry Turner
Award for non-fiction from the
Valley Writers’ Guild, and first prize
in the 2002 Winners’ Circle contest, an international short story
contest organized by the Toronto Branch of the
Canadian Authors
Association. Her stories "The Prospector’s Trail" and "Sand Trap"
received honourable mentions (respectively) in Storyteller’s
2000 and 2003 Great Canadian Story Contest. |
