Joan Thomas read a lot of books in her past occupations. Now, she is doing the book writing, and many Canadians are happy she is.
Thomas, who lives in Winnipeg, will be one of the presenters at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words, to be held July 14-17. Thomas will be reading from her latest novel, Curiosity, at the annual festival.
“I’ve heard a lot of raves from other writers who have been at the festival, so I was keen to come,” Thomas told the Times-Herald.
Curiosity is a work of historical fiction centred around the life of Mary Anning in England. Anning helped give birth to modern paleontology with her fossil and skeletal findings along the southern coast of England in the first half of the 19th century. She was also the inspiration for the famous ‘she sells seashells on the seashore’ tongue twister.
At the age of just 12, Anning discovered a full ichthyosaur skeleton with her brother. This find was some 50 years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, when most people still believed the world to be thousands of years old as opposed to millions.
“I personally think the story behind Curiosity is just fascinating. It was so rich, it felt like a gift to a writer,” said Thomas.
For more on this story, read Saturday's Times-Herald.
