Beverly Akerman

After over two decades in molecular genetics research, Beverly Akerman realized she'd been learning more and more about less and less. Skittish at the prospect of knowing everything about nothing, she turned, for solace, to writing. The Meaning of Children, was just published by Exile Editions; 2010 David Adams Richards Prize winner. Judge JoAnne Soper-Cook said the story collection provided a keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children, as well as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces existing between the everyday events of life. “There is knowledge here, knowledge of those important, life defining moments of puberty, the birth of a sibling, an encounter with a possibly dangerous stranger. Overall, a work with a brilliant sense of story.”

“Each story [is] a reminder of what an optimistic endeavour it is to parent…Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.” Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal Gazette.

“This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.” Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail.

Recent honours include nominations for the Pushcart Prize (fiction and nonfiction) and for the National Magazine Awards. Credits include Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Montreal Gazette and CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, myriad literary and scientific journals, and other publications. She’s strangely pleased to believe she’s the only Canadian writer ever to have sequenced her own DNA.

More on her website--http://beverlyakermanmscwriter.blogspot.com/--or look her up on Facebook or Twitter (Beverly_Akerman).