Jane Christmas

Jane Christmas
BornJane Elizabeth Grimshaw
(1954-01-22) 22 January 1954 (age 70)
Hamilton, Ontario
OccupationWriter
NationalityCanadian
EducationBachelor of Arts
Alma materCarleton University, Ottawa
Period1990s-present
Notable worksAnd Then There Were Nuns;
What the Psychic told the Pilgrim;
Open House: A Life in Thirty Two Moves

Jane Christmas (born 1954) is a Canadian writer from Hamilton, currently based in the UK,[1] who was twice a nominee for the Stephen Leacock Award.

Early life

Christmas was born and raised in Toronto, but spent much of her life in Hamilton, Ontario.[2]

Career

Christmas had a career as a newspaper editor and journalist, and later as a public relations manager in the public sector, before devoting her time exclusively to writing.[1]

She was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2014 for And Then There Were Nuns,[3] which chronicles a year she spent in various convents while deciding whether to marry for a third time or to take up a vocation as an Anglican nun.;[1] and was long-listed for the same award in 2021 for Open House: A Life in Thirty Two Moves.[4]

She has published five books of what has been categorized as travel writing but of which she prefers to call journey memoir. She was co-author of A Journey Just Begun (2015) with the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto.

Selected publications

  • The Pelee Project: One Woman's Escape from Urban Madness (2002)[5]
  • What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago de Compostela (2007)[6]
  • Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy (2009)[7]
  • And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life (2013)[1]
  • Open House: A Life in Thirty-two Moves (2020)[8]

Personal life

Christmas is a founding member of the Hamilton Civic League, and she remained in the city for more than 20 years. She currently lives in England.[9]

In 2011, she was accepted as an associate with the Canadian Anglican religious community, the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Joe O'Connor, "The Visiting Nun; Former journalist and publicist Jane Christmas shed her old trappings for the cloistered world of a nun, called by a calming, persistent voice". National Post, September 14, 2013.
  2. ^ Crawford, Trish (2009-09-18). "Mother and child reunion - sort of". The Toronto Star. ISSN 0319-0781. Retrieved 2022-04-13.
  3. ^ "Conall's hippies in C.B. tale wins Leacock award; Book's humour, insight lauded". Halifax Chronicle-Herald, May 30, 2014.
  4. ^ Armstrong, Bob (2021-05-01). "Leacock medal long list loaded with laughs". Winnipeg Free Press. Retrieved 2022-04-13.
  5. ^ John Laycock, "Lens focuses on Pelee". Windsor Star, November 1, 2002.
  6. ^ Sarah Treleaven, "Midlife passages; Like pilgrim-author Jane Christmas, many middle- aged women are abandoning their comfort zone to travel solo" (and page 2). Ottawa Citizen, December 9, 2007.
  7. ^ Gale Zoë Garnett, "Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy, by Jane Christmas". The Globe and Mail, October 1, 2009.
  8. ^ "Jane Christmas's new book explores a life on the move: For some people, even the thought of moving is hell. For this author, moving is an adventure". Hamilton Spectator, December 17, 2020.
  9. ^ "Here are all the #CanadaPerforms literary events that happened online". CBC. 7 April 2020.
  10. ^ Sarah Hampson, "'I found great solace'". The Globe and Mail, September 13, 2013.