Bio: Mary W. Walters

Mary W. Walters has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 25 years. She has also worked as awards facilitator at the University of Saskatchewan, executive director of the Writers Guild of Alberta, and editor in chief at Lone Pine Publishing. In addition to Write an Effective Funding Application: A Guide for Researchers and Scholars (The Johns Hopkins University Press), she has published two novels — The Woman Upstairs (NeWest Press) and Bitters (NeWest) — and a collection of short stories (Cool, River Books).

Mary has won a Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Excellence in Writing and her stories have been short-listed for the CBC/Saturday Night Fiction Competition and the Journey Prize. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared recently in The Rumpus (humour) and Geist (flash fiction).

Mary W. Walters was born in Wainwright, AB, and has subsequently lived in London, ON, Edmonton and Thorhild, AB, and Rosthern and Saskatoon, SK. In 2010, Mary moved to Toronto, where she writes, consults (as The Book Charmer) with writers of fiction and nonfiction, and offers workshops on effective grant-writing.