It wasn’t until she was 35 years old that Maureen Brownlee took her first course through TRU OL, but it was in those first English & First Nations Literature courses that she was introduced to the idea that her stories, particularly the idea that growing up as a small town farm girl in northern British Columbia, might have some literary worth.

Maureen Brownlee, TRU OL alumna, is a Canadian fiction writer. Her first novel, Loggers’ Daughters, was published by Oolichan Books in April 2013. Her second novel, Beauty Creek, is slated for publication Spring 2016.

“Writing, like lots of art forms, is a combination of skill, creativity, luck and practice. Formal education certainly helps with the skill level. University courses forced me to read things I might not have come to on my own, and taught me how to be more analytical as a reader, and how to articulate my perspective. I also learned from classroom discussions, classmates’ perspectives showed me things that I wouldn’t have seen on my own,” said Brownlee.

A former journalist, Brownlee started writing fiction as child, on a manual typewriter with sticky keys in the office behind the post office in her parent’s general store. In her twenties she paid monthly instalments for a home study writing course and wrote a handful of unpublished children’s stories. Then life intervened and she learned how to write about other topics during a decade spent running a weekly newspaper. After selling the newspaper in 1994, she moved to a small farm and spent the next ten years building fences, working at assorted day jobs, taking university courses by correspondence, and learning how to write fiction.

“Writing my first book took twenty years. Writing my second book, which is slated for publication spring 2016, has been faster. It will be about five years. Every writer seems to have their own process and every book seems to be different. Mostly my process is just to show up at the page, over and over and over,” said Brownlee.

Brownlee currently resides in Valemount, B.C. where she helps run a small cow-calf ranch while pursuing her career as a full time writer. Her interests, when not writing include: gardening, growing much of her own food, running, playing guitar, pencil sketching, and reading, reading, reading.

When asked what advice she would give to students and alumni looking to follower a similar career path, she said:

“Enjoy learning. It is one of life’s great gifts to be able to take a class with a professor who is learned and passionate about their subject. Pay attention to your own interests and curiosities. You have your own story. Everyone does.”