LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer and actress living in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of WONDROUS STRANGE, winner of the CLA Young Adult Book of the Year 2010, a White Pine Honour Book, and shortlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Speculative Fiction. DARKLIGHT, the second book in this series was shortlisted for the Indigo Teen Read Awards. The concluding volume in the trilogy, TEMPESTUOUS, was released in January of 2011, and was a finalist for the Monica Hughes Award. These books have sold to more than ten countries to date, and WONDROUS STRANGE has been optioned for film/TV.
ONCE EVERY NEVER, a YA time-travel romance-adventure – the first in a trilogy – was shortlisted for the CLA and Stellar awards, was a Quill & Quire Book of the Year, and winner of the inaugural Young Adult Copper Cylinder Award. The second book in the series, EVERY NEVER AFTER, was released in March last year and also received the Copper Cylinder. The conclusion, NOW AND FOR NEVER, is in stores now.
Lesley also has a third trilogy in the works. STARLING, the first book in a new standalone series set in the same universe as WONDROUS STRANGE, was released in the fall of 2012. The second book, DESCENDANT, launched in August of last year and she is currently working on the concluding volume.
She is also working on a Middle Grade series, co-written with Jonathan Llyr, called THE WIGGINS WEIRD. The first book, HOW TO CURSE IN HEIROGLYPHICS in on shelves now. The second book, THE HAUNTING OF HECK HOUSE, will be out in the fall of this year.
For almost three years, Lesley hosted weekly late-night movie marathons on the nationally broadcast television show, SPACEBAR, as the Waitron-9000, a sparkly holographic waitress with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure B-movie trivia. For almost two decades, she was a principal performer with Tempest Theatre Group, a Toronto-based Shakesperean theatre company.
Captivated at a young age by stories of mythology and folk lore, past civilizations, and legendary heroes, Lesley developed into a full-fledged Celtic Mythology Geek, steeped in stories of the Otherworld, Faeries and King Arthur. She went on to earn a Master’s Degree in English from the University of Toronto specializing in Shakespeare and Arthurian literature. Lesley is an unrepentant egghead – a character-trait that somehow doesn’t interfere with a love of shoes and shiny things.