The award-winning author of Afflictions & Departures turns her kaleidoscopic lens on England in the 1970s in Queasy, a series of linked memoirs. While still grieving her father's death and the end of her first romantic relationship, Madeline Sonik moved with her mother from Windsor, Ontario to the seaside village of Ilfracombe in North Devon, England.

As a teen at war with herself, nothing could have prepared her for the incredible cultural differences that she would encounter, nor the social and political tumult that was England at the time - trade union strikes, mass unemployment, IRA violence, and crippling taxes.

Waiting tables and working as a chambermaid at local hotels, she talked politics among friends and work mates, with hot cups of tea throughout the day and pints of lager in the evening. Margaret Thatcher - the "Iron Lady" - loomed large as opposition leader and was fast gaining popularity, even amongst segments of the working class. The country seemed poised on the cusp of change and a new direction.

It was in this unlikely crucible of hope and despair, of promise and discord where the author found the sustenance to fuel her development as a person and as a writer.

Madeline Sonik's first collection of short fiction, Drying the Bones, was released by Nightwood Editions in 2000. She is the co-editor of the recently released anthology Entering the Landscape (Oberon) and in 1998 identified a new direction in Canadian writing with the anthology Fresh Blood: New Canadian Gothic Fiction (Turnstone Press). Her fiction and poetry have appeared in major literary magazines, including Event, Grain, Pottersfield Portfolio, The New Quarterly and Descant. She holds an MA in Journalism and is currently an MFA candidate at The University of British Columbia. She is also a black cord priestess of 13th House Mystery School and a practicing witch.

Madeline Sonik's profile page