Bill Stenson won the Great BC Novel contest with his compelling novel, Ordinary Strangers (Mother Tongue). His books of fiction include Translating Women, Svoboda and Hanne and Her Brother (Thistledown). He was also a finalist for the Prism International Fiction Contest and the Prairie Fire Short Fiction Contest. Stenson was born in Nelson, B.C., went to a one-room schoolhouse on Thetis Island and grew up on a small farm in Duncan. He became a teacher because he loved literature and taught English and Creative Writing at various high schools, the Victoria School of Writing and the University of Victoria. Many of his stories have been published in Canada and the US in Grain, The Malahat Review, Event, The Antigonish Review, filling Station, Blood and Aphorisms, Wascana Review, Prairie Fire, Toronto Star, The New Quarterly, Prism International, Scarlet Leaf Review, Darkhouse Books and the Nashwaak Review. Stenson and Terence Young founded the Claremont Review, an international literary magazine for young adult writers. Bill Stenson lives with his wife poet Susan Stenson in the Cowichan Valley and writes every day.
