Shane Joseph

Shane Joseph began writing as a teenager living in Sri Lanka and has never stopped. From an early surge of short stories and radio play scripts, to humorous corporate skits, travelogues, case studies and technical papers, then novels, more short stories and essays, he continues to pursue the three pages-a-day maxim and keeps writer’s block at bay.

His career stints include: stage and radio actor, pop musician, encyclopaedia salesman, lathe machine operator, airline executive, travel agency manager, and vice president of a global financial services company.

Self-taught, with four degrees under his belt obtained through distance education, Shane is an avid traveller and has visited one country for every year of his life. He fondly recalls incidents during his travels as real lessons he could never have learned in school: husky driving in Finland with no training, trekking the Inca Trail in Peru through an unending rainstorm, hitch-hiking in Australia without a map, escaping a wild elephant in Zambia, and being stranded without money in Denmark, are some of his memories.

Redemption in Paradise, his first published novel, was written in the summer of 2002 while attending the Humber School for Writers Correspondence programme with mentor David Adams Richards. He completed a second novel, After the Flood, in 2003. The Ulysses Man, an odyssey of linked stories about the immigrant experience in Canada, was written in 2006, and the first draft of a new novel, In the Shadow of the Conquistador, in 2007. His short stories on Canadian themes have appeared in Existere magazine and two CAA anthologies.

After immigrating (twice), raising a family, building a career, and experiencing life’s many highs and lows, Shane has carved out a niche in Cobourg, Ontario with his wife Sarah, where he continues to write stories and play his guitar.