About me
I am a creative nonfiction writer, presently concentrating on travel memoir. My first book in this genre, Finding Myself in Borneo: Sojourns in Sabah, has won three awards and many 5-star reviews. It’s all about how I started my career as a volunteer teacher and filmmaker on that exotic island in Southeast Asia. My second travel memoir, Guns and Gods in My Genes is explained in its subtitle, A 15,000-mile North American search through four centuries of history, to the Mayflower. It is a deep dive into my ancestry, written in a refreshingly creative way.
Kid on the Go! Memoir of My Childhood and Youth is my third work of creative nonfiction. It is a standalone prequel to Finding Myself in Borneo. In this new book, I take readers on a humorous and poignant journey through my childhood, early adolescence, and teenage years from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, in the small industrially-polluted town of Elmira in southern Ontario, Canada. Except for a revealing postscript, the story ends when I head to Borneo in 1968. A standalone sequel on my career is also in the works.
I hold a BA in Psychology from the University of Calgary, Alberta (1968) and a Master of Science in Communication from Florida State University, Tallahassee (1988). During my career, I was employed by Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO); Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC); UNICEF; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Academy for Educational Development and FHI 360, Washington, DC.
I worked and lived in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, and Russia for a total of 18 years and traveled to over 80 countries on short-term assignments. I am also the author of several books, articles and manuals on communication for development and the producer/director of many films, animated films, videos, and multi-media initiatives, most of which can be viewed on: