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Gail Sidonie Sobat
http://www.gailsidoniesobat.com
Gail is on Facebook and can be contacted via Facebook or by her e-mail address .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Gail’s writing career began in Grade 3, when her teacher, Mrs.. Leskiw, made her feel like a real writer. Gail had written a story as an assignment and her teacher telephoned Gail’s mother to tell her that the writing Gail had completed was more sophisticated than that done by most Grade 9 students.“With that phone call, Mrs. Leskiw dubbed me a writer, and that stayed in my consciousness throughout my school years and into adult- hood”. Her career got another boost from a high school teacher, Duane Stewart, who taught her about editing and avoiding “adolescent.angst.”.
Gail has lived in a number of communities around Alberta, eventually ending up in Edmonton, where she earned a.BEd, a BA, and a MA in Eng- lish at the University of Alberta. Her teaching career began in St. Albert, Alberta. In short order she found herself off on an exotic, wonderful and terrifying adventure as a teacher in Istanbul, Turkey. Her contract, how- ever, along with those of all the other foreign teachers at.that school, was abruptly cancelled, so she returned to Canada, first to Powell River, British Columbia, then home to Edmonton, where she was seconded to the University of Alberta as a Field Experience Associate. Two years later she became a teacher at the Amiskwaciy Academy, western Canada’s first urban aboriginal high school. She then took a short hiatus from teaching, but soon returned to the profession, joining the University of Alberta Hospital School, where she still teaches. She is also Adjunct Professor in Secondary Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta.
Awards
Hope Writers’ Guild Poetry Contest, 1993
English Language Arts Council Award, 2000
Arts Award for Career Development, Alberta Heritage Scholarship, 2002
Canadian Children’s Book Centre Choice Award, 2004, 2005
Moonbeam Gold Award, 2009
