Katie Bickell immigrated to Canada when she was six years old and became a Canadian citizen at the age of seventeen.
Growing up in a rural Northern Alberta Katie spent her teen and early adult years working in childcare, education, and family resources; experiences that introduced her to the challenges faced – and the vast discrepancies suffered – by the province’s most vulnerable.
Katie began writing of those experiences during her first pregnancy, during which she moved to Sherwood Park, a large hamlet outside of Edmonton, Alberta. Although removed from the clients she once served, she found certain themes relating to them came up again, and again, in her literary work. Eventually these fictionalized accounts made up the the bulk of her first book, Always Brave, Sometimes Kind: A Novel told in Short Stories. It’s chapters already the recipient of several awards, including The Alberta Literary Award’s Howard O’Hagan for Short Story, The Alberta Views Fiction Prize, The Alberta Literary Award’s Emerging Writer Award, and an Individual Artist’s Grant for the Alberta Foundation of the Arts, Always Brave, Sometimes Kind is scheduled to be published by Brindle and Glass, a literary imprint of TouchWood Editions, September 2020.
Katie is currently completing her second book, Kicked: A Memoir.
When not writing (at ungodly hours of the morning), Katie enjoys growing food and flowers (in the summer); cooking, canning, and knitting (in the winter); long walks and longer books (always); learning piano with her youngest daughter; practicing soccer with her eldest; and holding her husband’s hand (anytime at all). She lives with those three mentioned above plus a black cat, a chocolate lab, and maybe the ghost of her recently deceased beagle. Katie teaches full-day preschool at a Montessori Learning and Enrichment Centre in Sherwood Park, Alberta.
She likely needs a coffee, or a nap, but definitely wants to hear from you.