User:Holmbroad/Vicki Grant

Vicki Grant is a Canadian author of young adult fiction. She was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She went to Dalhousie University www.dal.ca, leaving after her first year to participate in Canada World Youth where she experienced the Guatemalan earthquake of 1976.

She returned to Halifax and went to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design www.nscad.ca. She went on to complete her BA at Dalhousie and her Certificat d’Enseignement at Universite Laval www.ulaval.ca in Quebec City.

She began her professional life as a copywriter for a number of advertising agencies in Toronto including Foote Cone Belding, McCann Erickson, Saatchi and Saatchi, and Chiat-Day.

In 1988, she married Augustus Richardson. They returned to Halifax in 1990.

She wrote her first children’s television script in 1994 after the birth of her third child. She freelanced for a number of TV productions (Theodore Tugboat, Big Comfy Couch, Sesame Park) before creating and co-producing the preschool comedy series Scoop and Doozie. She won a Gemini in 2000 for Best Writing in a Children’s or Youth Program for a Scoop and Doozie episode entitled “What Rubbish”. []

In 2004, her first book was published. The Puppet Wrangler, (www.orcabook.com) a comic adventure for 10- to 14- year olds, was inspired by her work in television and was nominated for numerous awards. Her next book, Quid Pro Quo, is a legal thriller for teens which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Fiction in Canada [] and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe. Her novels, Res Judicata and Not Suitable for Family Viewing, www.harpercollins.ca/ were also nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award.

Her young adult mystery "Not Suitable for Family Viewing" won The Ontario Library Association's 2011 Red Maple Award and was shortlisted for numerous other awards. "Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret" is her latest YA novel.]]]]

She has a particular interest in reluctant readers and has written a number of shorter books for them including Dead End Job and Pigboy, both of which have been chosen as American Library Association Quick Picks /ref>.

Three of Grant’s novels – The Puppet Wrangler, Quid Pro Quo, and Not Suitable for Family Viewing – have been nominated for the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year /ref>

Her novels have been translated into five languages.

She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.