Maureen Brownlee was born and raised on the western slope of the northern Rockies in British Columbia, Canada. A former journalist, Brownlee started writing fiction as a child, on a manual typewriter with sticky keys in the cubbyhole behind the post office in her parents' tiny general store. In her twenties she paid monthly instalments for a home study writing course and wrote a handful of unpublished children’s stories. Then life intervened and she learned how to write about other topics during a decade spent running a weekly newspaper. After selling the newspaper in 1994, she moved to a small farm and spent the next fifteen years building fences, working at assorted day jobs, taking university courses by correspondence, and learning how to write fiction. Her writing education has included workshops at Island Mountain School of the Arts, Fernie Writers Conference, and Sage Hill Writing Experience. Additionally she studied English and Creative Writing at B.C.’s Open University and the University of Northern British Columbia. When not writing, Maureen gardens, growing much of her own food, runs for the fun of it, dabbles at the guitar and pencil sketching, and reads, reads, reads. She lives on a farm near Valemount, British Columbia on the traditional territory of the LLheidli T’enneh and Simpcw First Nations.