Our 2025 White Pines Authors Part 1

The Port Moody Public Library created the White Pines Local Author Collection to highlight and support local authors, poets, and illustrators from our community. We launched the collection in May 2019 with 12 inaugural authors.

Now, with over 100 authors represented, the collection has grown to house even more creative and diverse submissions from members of our community. You can browse our White Pines Collection online to place holds on items, or in person at the Library under the green White Pines sign.

Sadiq Somjee

Sadiq Somjee is a Canadian writer and illustrator who creates science fiction and fantasy stories exploring possible futures. He holds a degree in computer science from Simon Fraser University. When he’s not writing or illustrating, he enjoys exploring the forests near his home in Coquitlam, with his dog - where black bears always have the right of way.

Sadiq develops his ideas in a sketchbook, experimenting with colours, character designs, and world-building using ink and watercolour. In the final stages of his creative process, he refines his work using digital tools like Procreate.

Find out more about Sadiq at https://www.sadiqsomjee.com.

Book: Solitude In-Between Worlds

Solitude, In-Between Worlds is a modern-day twist on 1984 and A Brave New World. Ali, a refugee in a new country, is falsely arrested when a fascist government is elected. He is taken to a lab and used in diabolical neuro-implant experiments, intended to alter his identity by giving him new memories. Fleeing persecution, he finds himself abandoned in a North American coastal forest where he takes refuge. Struggling to remember who he is, his instincts and wits keep him alive. With the help of a recurring spirit guide, Ali begins to heal from his trauma and find uneasy belonging.

Borrow Solitude In-Between Worlds from the Library.

Book: Alama’s Walk: The Oracle Speaks

Alama's Walk: The Oracle Speaks is the first of three graphic novels about Indigenous peace practices in eastern Africa. The three novels are inspired by One Who Dreams is Called a Prophet, a book about a lone elder's walk in pursuit of the last traces of Indigenous knowledge of Utu during conflicts. The walk resulted in cultivating conversations on reconciliation in a conflicted country, among diverse cultures, in diverse languages and diverse arts that led to the making of the Community Museums of Peace in eastern Africa.

Each book in the Alama’s Walk series has a running meme on Utu as viewed by 10 Indigenous cultures through elders' memories, the environment, material culture, community stories, rituals, and spirituality.

Borrow Alama’s Walk: The Oracle Speaks from the Library.

Book: Alama’s Walk: Healing the Earth

Alama the nomad from the northern desert continues south in his quest for peace. Along the way he meets other indigenous elders who share their stories and exchange peace tree staffs with him. This beautifully illustrated novel brings to life the amazing landscapes, customs and cultures of East Africa.

Borrow Alama’s Walk: Healing the Earth from the Library.

What inspired Sadiq to become a graphic novelist?

As a child, Sadiq spent countless hours drawing, reading comics, and observing the natural world. He found joy in sharing his art and stories with friends and family, even using a homemade slide projector to bring his creations to life. This passion for storytelling and visual art eventually led him to pursue graphic novels.

What challenges has Sadiq faced?

Sadiq creates stories from the heart, drawing inspiration from his life experiences. However, in an era where AI-generated images and stories are becoming increasingly prevalent, he sees a challenge in preserving authentic, human-driven storytelling. This fuels his determination to craft original, meaningful narratives that reflect real emotions, experiences, and imagination.

W.L. Hawkin

W. L. Hawkin

W. L. Hawkin writes “myth, magic, and mayhem.” Her Hollystone Mysteries feature a coven of Vancouver witches who solve murders using ritual magic and a little help from the gods. The books - To Charm a Killer, To Sleep with Stones, To Render a Raven, To Kill a King, and To Dance with Destiny - follow Estrada, a free-spirited magician and coven high priest. Her standalone novel, LURE, won a National Indie Excellence Award. In her latest release, Writing with Your Muse, she explains her creative process and teaches techniques to inspire writers.

Find out more about W.L. at https://bluehavenpress.com/, on Instagram at @w.l.hawkin and on Facebook at /wlhawkin.

Book: LURE: Jesse and Hawk

Hawk is a wounded doctor bent on losing himself on the Chippewa reservation in Minnesota. Jesse's a vegan nature photographer trying to find herself on that same wild land.

When Hawk shoots the deer that Jesse's photographing, passions flare. Then Jesse hears that Hawk's friend is dying and sets off alone on horseback to warn him. He deserves the chance to say goodbye, like she never had. But danger lurks everywhere near the small Midwestern town of Lure River. Jesse's just discovered the twenty-year-old bones of a missing Indigenous girl in her shed and drawn the unwanted attention of two local men. Can Hawk find Jesse before they find her?

Borrow LURE: Jesse and Hawk from the Library.

Book: To Render a Raven

Book three of the Hollystone Mystery series.

Estrada is High Priest of Hollystone Coven, a shaman and magician. But is he a match for a vengeful vampire? When Diego steals his daughter from her crib on the eve of her first birthday, the Hollystone witches converge. The same night, a woman is murdered and another abducted. All three scenes are marked by roses that point to Michael Stryker, Estrada's lover and best friend, a man with a strange dark "virus" brewing inside him. As the witches journey up the Pacific coast, emotions run raw as the close confines of a yacht heighten the tension between jealous lovers. And then they meet the ravens...

Diego wants blood. Estrada wants his baby back. What will the high priest sacrifice to bring his daughter home?

Borrow To Render a Raven from the Library.

Book: To Kill a King

Book four of the Hollystone Mystery series.

Sorcha just wanted to warn Ruairí of his fate until she saw him and fell in love. How could she leave him to be ritually murdered and cast in a bog to cure for two thousand years?

Though he's lost and grieving the loss of his lover, when Estrada realizes his friend, Sorcha, is trapped in Iron Age Ireland, he demands that Cernunnos take him and Dylan back through time to rescue her. The Horned God states the rules: you cannot change history or develop bonds with anyone. How can Sorcha, the spirited archaeologist, survive this prehistoric warrior culture? Assuming she's fey, Ruairí's unscrupulous rival wants her power; but worse still, Ruairí's lover, the wicked Crow Queen, wants her dead.

Can Estrada use his Wiccan powers and skills to defeat Iron Age Druids and bring his friends home?

Borrow To Kill a King from the Library.

What inspires W.L. to write?

Wendy (W.L.) sunk into this phase of her writing career while teaching full time English at Port Moody Secondary School. Reading literature is a catalyst to inspiration, and writing her own stories offered an escape from the stress of teaching. Her first two main characters were inspired by polyamorous poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Since writing that first novel, she’s gone on to complete a five-book urban fantasy series featuring them; a romantic suspense novel inspired by her Trent University days in Indigenous Studies; a memoir style book about her writing process; a YA mystery set in a lighthouse; and a historical fiction novel set in B.C. during the rumrunner days. “I’m often inspired by an experience (whether physical or metaphysical), a news article or a photograph. When I can’t let it go, I know it will find its way into a story.” For example, a bog body in the Irish midlands inspired her time-travel thriller To Kill a King. A true crime story in the Raincoast Chronicles about a murdered father and son inspired The Rumrunner, and her experiences as a B.C. lighthouse keeper inspired The Shadow Man. The first books Wendy read as a child were fairy stories and they left their mark. “The supernatural seeps into everything I write. Ghosts, Irish faeries, good witches, even nasty vampires have secrets to reveal about life.”

What have W.L.’s biggest challenges been while writing?

How to juggle time is Wendy’s biggest challenge. Most authors, including her, have day jobs to finance their writing career. She’s also proud to be a hands-on grandma to a little red-haired boy and mama to her lovely Labrador retriever. Also, she must promote and market her own books. Right now, she’s juggling nine books in different stages—a series she’s rebranding, two she’s pitching to agents, one she’s submitted to a contest for feedback, and two needing sequels. But how does an author stop the world from spinning so they can jump off, hide away, and just write?

“Often ideas and conversations happen as I’m slipping off to sleep or out walking in the woods with my dog. I jot them down, and then I must wait until I have a solid block of time to go deep into a meditative state and write the scene. Writing is the love of my life. It feeds my spirit.” Wendy’s challenge is in finding quality time to record those voices that whisper in her ear.

Kasturi Ghosh

Kasturi Ghosh is an International Trade consultant by profession and a wordsmith by compulsion. Her career has provided her with the opportunity to live on multiple continents and visit a score of countries, allowing her to observe the intriguing cultural diversity of geographies and the common thread of human emotions that bind us. This varied, yet wonderfully familiar well of human emotions - strength, resilience, love, mortality, grief, introspection, and hope forms the raw material for her poetry.

Threads of spirituality, the human quest to find meaning in existence, and our resilience and strength in the face of mortality, are strongly woven throughout her work, as in her daily life choices and practices. From quantum theory to the cosmos, religious texts to philosophical doctrines, all are devoured with equal fervour, in her search to find the essence of that which connects us all, in the face of our differences.

Passionate about ensuring the voices of those marginalized and discriminated against are heard, Kasturi lends her voice and pen to paper within her community, social media, and platforms spanning her professional and personal world. She lives with her spouse and daughter in Port Moody.

You can find her work on Instagram at @kasturiwords, and a curated writing blog on Facebook at /@wanderingwrds. Her first published book of poetry, Parched Paper – A Tapestry of Words, is also available in the White Pines Collection.

Book: Bloody Woman! ...words to awaken the fearless female

This collection of poems and words are meant to awaken every woman to both the creative power and the enormous strength she has lying dormant and potent within her. In finding this prowess lies her strength and her freedom. Freedom from needing to prove she is equal to man, freedom from defined roles, freedom from tangible and invisible boundaries.

Borrow Bloody Woman! from the Library.

What inspires Kasturi to write?

Kasturi has been putting thoughts to paper since she was a young girl. As life allowed for more varied experiences, her writing too evolved as a means of introspecting, assimilation, and expression. Her love for words, whether in consuming the written word or writing in her personal or professional capacity forms the core of who she is. Poetry as a form of writing became Kasturi’s predominant choice of expression as she matured.

Kasturi and her partner welcomed their daughter into their lives recently. If there was ever a nudge of cosmic proportions, this was it for Kasturi - the undeniable call to pour all her strength, wisdom, and life lessons into words for her little girl. This led to her latest collection.

Through this collection of poems, Kasturi nudges women to embrace their difference and wear it as a badge. To reclaim their authentic selves passionately and fearlessly; step out of their comfort zones and socially defined caricatures to embrace and unfurl their raw, bold, and independent selves; find their voice and dare to script their own story.

What have Kasturi’s biggest challenges been while writing?

Writing is almost an extension of thinking for Kasturi and is very organic. Hence finding the words have never been the challenge. The challenge has been to juggle the call to write with a demanding career and being mom to a toddler. To carve out the time and space that will allow for creative thinking and the discipline required to hone any art is the challenge. Especially in today's ever connected world, finding the mental vacuum essential to foster creativity, in any form, is a luxury.

Kelly McKenzie

Kelly McKenzie is a local writer who worked at her mother’s iconic Vancouver Asian antique store, Frankie Robinson Oriental Gallery (FROG) for over a decade. Defying remarkable odds, she became a valued partner, picking up bookkeeping skills, marathon running, and a husband along the way. A cast member of Seattle's first Listen to Your Mother show, she's been published in community newspapers across Canada, in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, and in various blogs and anthologies. Never, Never, Hardly Ever is a result of Frankie's endless encouragement to "get our antics out into the world." Ever a quirk magnet, Kelly shares more of her antics at https://www.kellylmckenzie.com/. You can also follow her on Instagram at @kellylmckenzie and Facebook at /kelly.mckenzie.376.

Book: Never, Never, Hardly Ever: A Mother-Daughter Story of Antiques and Antic

A month into a summer stint at her type-A mother’s Asian antique and collectibles store, FROG, Kelly is struggling to make her first sale. The twenty-six-year-old knows nothing about the inventory and cares for it even less.

This coming-of-age memoir revels in frequently challenging mother/daughter dynamics often played against a cast of colourful, unforgettable, characters. Kelly never imagined working at FROG. She’s surprised to discover a welcoming community hub where customers are encouraged to linger and share their lives. With her two best friends moving away, Kelly treasures these new friendships, including that of a certain customer’s son who happens to be dating her dedicated running partner. But just as things seem to be sorting themselves out, Kelly is shocked when her tour de force mother suddenly announces her intention to abandon FROG in favor of operating a completely different business. Kelly must decide. Should she quit or commit?

Borrow Never, Never, Hardly Ever from the Library.

What inspired Kelly to write?

After majoring in Theatre at UBC, Kelly ran the seniors' program for a local charter bus company for four years. The highlight of her job was designing and writing up the tours for the various brochures. When she went on to work with her mom at FROG, she was delighted to handle most of the correspondence and promotional work. Her mom retired at seventy-two and they closed the shop. Kelly became a mother and life puttered along until her husband died when her two kids were just sixteen months and three years old. As her kids grew, Kelly’s writing outlets were mostly the newsletters for their various interests. When her youngest went off to university, she enrolled in an online UBC writing course called The Momoir Project and shared how her two kids survived being raised by her. Kelly submitted her stories to an online news distributor out of Calgary and was soon published in local newspapers across Canada. Wanting a broader reach, she began blogging, and when she introduced the quirky stories about Frankie, her type-A mom, readers asked for more. Thankfully Kelly’s mom journalled daily. Kelly pored through the pertinent diaries and came up with enough material for the manuscript for Never, Never, Hardly Ever.

What have Kelly’s biggest challenges been while writing?

Initially it was a lack of time. Between working and driving the kids to swimming, soccer, lacrosse, school, field trips, etc. and ensuring their lives weren't defined by the early demise of their dad, writing was on the back burner.

When Kelly started writing Never, Never, Hardly Ever, at first, the most challenging part was worrying about what her mom would think of her spilling the tea about their shop. Once she got over that and just focused on getting the truth down, the words flowed.

The most challenging thing about publication was not printing out the manuscript before it went into layout. During the layout process, there should be very few changes. However, a manuscript on your laptop is very different than on paper or in layout. Even though Kelly had hired a professional editor, and they pawed through the manuscript dozens of times, countless errors now leapt out. Errors she would have picked up had she printed it out. As an added bonus, Kelly felt many chapters came across dryer than unbuttered toast. She had to rewrite them, and the book's publication was delayed a few months. Kelly won't make the same mistake with book two!

Kim Bunka

Kim Bunka is thrilled to have her book Honey I Love You included in the White Pines Collection at the Port Moody Library. She is a life-long resident of the Lower Mainland and spent twenty-seven years living in Port Moody, frequenting the library and Inlet Theatre. Apart from writing, Kim is also a Performing Arts Educator teaching voice lessons, musical theatre and show choir for The Lindbjerg Academy, Showstoppers Academy, and Evergreen Cultural Centre. She also worked for Disney Cruise Lines for eight years. Kim has always loved writing and hopes to write more books in the future.

Find out more about Kim on her social media.
Instagram: @kimbunka.author
Facebook: /kim.bunka
TikTok: @kimbunka.author

Book: Honey I Love You

A book honouring the love between a Mama bear and her baby. Baby bear has a lot of questions and Mama does her best to answer and reassure her little one.

This book is fantastic for all kids but especially those going to Pre-school or Kindergarten for the first time or may otherwise be away from their parent for an extended period.

The book’s rhyming couplets and delightfully rich illustrations make it a perfect book to read aloud to a child or for a child to practice reading themselves.

Borrow Honey I Love You from the Library.

What inspired Kim to write?

Kim has always loved writing stories ever since elementary school, and she has written short plays for her students. She was looking for another way to be creative apart from performing in musicals and teaching and she thought of rekindling her love of writing. Honey I Love You is inspired by Kim’s late mother and her incredible capacity for unconditional love as well as her littlest students who sometimes have trouble saying goodbye to their grown-ups before a class or summer camp.

What have Kim’s biggest challenges been while writing?

One of Kim’s biggest challenges has been believing in herself and her efforts as a writer. There’s sometimes a little voice saying, “Who are you to think you can be a writer?” Luckily, Kim has had some good friends to help support her and encourage her to keep going.

About the White Pines Local Author Collection

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