Allan Stratton was in grade 12 when his play The Rusting Heart was produced on CBC radio. His summer job after third year university was acting at the Stratford Festival. After completing an Honours B.A. in English and an MA in Drama from the University of Toronto, he acted fulltime in theatre, T.V. and film, until switching to playwriting with the international success of his comedy Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii. In the late 1990s he headed the Drama Department at the Etobicoke School of the Arts, and began to write fiction. Both of his previous young adult novels, Leslie’s Journal and Chanda’s Secrets, were first runner-ups for the White Pine Award. They were also named to the American Library Association’s Best Books list and won many other citations and awards here and abroad. Allan likes to snorkel, dive, travel. He also likes to perform his work and field questions at schools.

His books have been published in the U.S., China, Germany, France, Great Britain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, the Netherlands and Slovenia. You can read about them, and see their covers, reviews, awards, and interview videos with Allan on his website: www.allanstratton.com

SIXTEEN THINGS ALLAN WILL NEVER FORGET!
• Encountering a shark while snorkeling off Cayo Largo
• Wandering alone through the Red Pyramid, in the desert south of Saqqara, Egypt
• White-water rafting in the Canadian Rockies
• Taking a balloon ride with his eighty-year-old mom over Cappadocia, Turkey
• Waking up to find an elephant beside his tent in the bush in Botswana
• Volunteering at a soup kitchen while living in Manhattan
• Undergoing a santerían purification ritual in rural Cuba
• Providing palliative care to a friend dying of AIDS
• Staying overnight in a one-room mud home in the village of Ulongwe, Malawi
• Sleeping between train cars while traveling by rail through the former Yugoslavia during the Cold War
• Shaking hands with Pope Paul VI, age eighteen, at an audience in Vatican City
• Meditating in Buddhist temples around Bangkok, Thailand
• Climbing the minaret of the Mosque of Qaitbey in Cairo’s City of the Dead
• Skiing opposite the Matterhorn
• Hiking along the Great Wall of China
• Eating a mopani worm in Zimbabwe