(Author/Writer, Creative Writing, Literary Arts)
Katherine Palmer Gordon is the author of six non-fiction books and a freelance writer, contributing to publications such as Canadian Geographic, BC Business, British Columbia Magazine, Focus, Action Asia and North and South among others.
(Author/Writer, Creative Writing, Literary Arts)
Katherine Palmer Gordon has been writing for publications in Canada and New Zealand since 1995. Born Katherine Palmer in England in 1963, with her much-travelled family she eventually settled in New Zealand. She now divides her time between her long-term home on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, and New Zealand, where she is currently residing.
Katherine writes about people, culture, politics and the contemporary issues that face society, both the serious and the lighthearted. She has covered some of the most beautiful regions of the planet, the fascinating people who live around us and what they do, and environmental, cultural, and business-related issues. Her feature article abut climate change "A Sinking Feeling," published in BC Business Magazine in July 2005, gained National Magazine Award recognition, as did her April 2008 Canadian Geographic article "No Reservations," about the Tsawwassen treaty. She is also a contributor to the Globe and Mail, Te Karaka, Focus Magazine, Boulevard and British Columbia magazine, among others. Read some of her articles here:
First Nations Holding the Wall: http://www.focusonline.ca/?q=node/682
Truth and Irreconciliation? http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/628
Other Focus Magazine stories: https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/profile/413-katherine-palmer-gordon/content/
Profile of Shelagh Rogers: http://issuu.com/boulevardlifestylesinc/docs/sept_oct_2009
No Reservations: The Tsawwassen Treaty: http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/apr08/feature_tsawwassen.asp
With more than three decades' experience as a contracts lawyer and First Peoples' land claims negotiator and facilitator, both in New Zealand and British Columbia, Katherine also writes about the complex and human side of Indigenous matters in Canada and New Zealand and related cultural issues. She is a former director of the First Peoples' Cultural Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising awareness and funds for language revitalization. Katherine is a former director of The Gabriola Arts Council, the Writers' Union of Canada, and Access Copyright, the Canadian collective licensing body, and is currently on the board of Copyright Licensing NZ. She also Chairs the Writers' Union of Canada's Grievance Liaison Committee.
As well as being the author of five books under the name Katherine Gordon, she has published two more books as Katherine Palmer Gordon and is now at work on her 8th book. She has contributed essays to Nobody's Mother: Life Without Kids (Touchwood, 2006), also shortlisted for the 2007 BC book prizes, and to a 2008 collection, Imagining BC: Land, Memory and Place (Anvil Press) essays by BC authors about their sense of connection to a part of the province, as well as In This Together (Brindle & Glass, 2016) and Love of The Salish Sea Islands (MotherTongue, 2019).
Maps, Mountains & Mosquitoes,a history of the 100-year-old McElhanney Group (http://www.mcelhanney.com/100years/), won the silver medal for best corporate history in the international 2011 Axiom Business Book Awards presented in New York. Maps, Mountains and Mosquitoes is the story of a Western Canadian engineering and surveying company that started business as a tiny one-man office in Vancouver in 1910 and whose employees have worked all over the world, including post-war Cambodia and in the clean-up efforts after the Boxing Day Tsunami. Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/Maps-Mountains-Mosquitoes-McElhanney-1910-2010/dp/0981255612.
We Are Born With the Songs Inside Us,(see cover, above) exploring the connections between culture and self through the stories of young Aboriginal Canadians who discuss their lives as British Columbians of First Nations heritage was released in September 2013 by Harbour Publishing, BC: http://www.harbourpublishing.com/title/BornwiththeSongsInsideUs.
Read reviews here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Inspirational+First+Nations+people+sing+their+songs/9287127/story.html
http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/602
http://www.soundernews.com/lifestyle/we-are-born-with-the-songs-inside-us-a-celebration-of-hope-and-aspirations.html
http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/entertainment/231936861.html.
