Fernie & Elk Valley Culture Guide Issue 1 Summer 2016 | Page 23

FEATURE AUTHOR Angie Abdou Angie Abdou moved to Fernie in the late 1990s. Though she makes her home partly in Alberta now, as a Professor of Creative Writing at Athabasca University, she is still active in Fernie’s literary community. She is an awardwinning author who published her first book Anything Boys Can Do in 2006 and her first novel, The Bone Cage, in 2007.  The Bone Cage became the inaugural One Book One Kootenay. With that honour came a 16-library tour throughout the East and West Kootenay, which Angie did with a toddler and baby in tow. The Bone Cage went on to be a CBC Canada Reads finalist in 2011, where it was championed by NHL star Georges Laraque. In 2012, The Bone Cage was named MacEwan Book of the Year, putting Angie in a prestigious group of authors, including Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel and Michael Ondaatje. Next, Angie published a satire of ski culture called The Canterbury Trail. It won an IPPY gold medal (an award for independent publishing) and was named a finalist for the Banff Mountain Book of the Year.  Angie’ s most recent novel is Between  (2014, Arsenal Press). It explores the lives of working mothers and Filipino nannies and has been reviewed extremely favourably by critics in The Globe and Mail, National Post, Winnipeg Review, and Vancouver Sun, as well as by the book industry’s publication The Quill and Quire. It launched in the US in April 2015, and New York’s Library Journal listed it as a Top 13 Indie Pick for Spring 2015. Between was named a “Best of 2014” book by PRISM Magazine, 49th Shelf, and The Vancouver Sun. Angie’s novel-in-progress is a ghost story set in the Rocky Mountains. She is a co-organizer of the Booked! Fernie Writers’ Series. abdou.ca 23