Candace Allan

Candace Allan won her first writing award in a Calgary Herald writing contest in grade school. She tuned her talent at the University of Victoria, graduating with a major in creative writing. Setting out to write the great Canadian novel, she was soon distracted by raising her bevy of children, and with positions on school councils. Candace found short stories suited her chaotic schedule, and wrote award winning fiction, while using her own life as fodder for humorous parenting anecdotes, which were published in a short series in Canadian Living magazine and broadcast on CBC radio. She briefly escaped her crew of children to study at the Banff Center for the Arts and has won the Alberta Views Magazine fiction prize twice. When her four adventurous children started to leave home she self-medicated her helicopter-parenting reactions with the therapeutic writing of, Text Me, Love Mom –Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest.