RICHARD THOMPSON
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Updated: November 2006
I was born on January 7, 1951 in Edmonton, Alberta. My father was an oilfield worker and my family lived at the time in Redwater, a small community north of Edmonton. My family followed the oilrigs until I was old enough for school when we settled in Debolt, a tiny village near Grande Prairie. When I was nine, we moved to Fort St. John, B.C. I finished high school there in 1969 and left to go to art school in Vancouver.
My wife, Maggee Spicer, and our daughter, Jesse, and I now live in Prince George, B.C.
Maggee is an elementary school teacher, and the co-author (with myself) of several books for emergent readers. Our fifth collaboration, WHEN THEY ARE UP (with illustrations by Kirsti Wakelin) will be published in Fall 2003 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. Maggee is also an enthusiastic yoga practitioner and instructor.
Jesse was, of course, the inspiration for the "Jesse Adventure Series", a collection of six picture books published by Annick Press. Several of those titles are now available on this web site as e-books.
Jesse will be twenty-four on her next birthday -- February 12, 2007. She recently finished her classroom training and practicum work in the Early Childhood Education program at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George (the same program that I graduated from in 1980) and is currently working in the childcare community in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
May 19, 1989 was the last day of classes at The Story Vine Nursery School. After ten years of full time work with young children - one year of Early Childhood Education training, two years working in a group daycare, six years operating Oscar O's Family Daycare and one year teaching nursery school - I "retired" to devote more of my time and energy to writing and storytelling.
Ten years earlier when my wife encouraged me to give up my job as a restaurant cook and enroll in the Early Childhood Education program at the community college, I was doubtful, but working with young children proved to be fun and rewarding. And it certainly gave me the opportunity to read and read and read lots of children's books and to tell many, many stories. I have always enjoyed writing, but that everyday involvement with children's literature and storytelling was probably the real beginning of my writing career. Then in the spring of 1985, two things happened which were important factors in my decision to turn my attention seriously to writing for children. Our daughter, Jesse started to talk. And we got a computer. Suddenly, I had a wonderful source of inspiration for stories and a way to get those stories down on paper and into the mail with a reasonable expenditure of time and energy. In the fall of 1985, I made a commitment to make a serious effort to write and to market what I wrote. I told myself that I had to expect to keep writing stories and sending them away for a long time before I was lucky enough to find a publisher who was looking for what I had to offer when I had it to offer.
As it turned out I was very fortunate to find a publisher relatively quickly. In February of 1986 I got a call from Rick Wilks, the "ick" of Annick Press saying that he and Anne Millyard (the "Ann") were interested in publishing a whole series of my Jesse inspired stories. Annick Press eventually published six books in the Jesse Adventure Series (all of them illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes). Anne and Rick encouraged and supported my explorations in other directions as well and published a novel for older children, two collections of "draw-and-tell" stories and several "un-Jesse" picture books.
Shortly after I started writing "seriously", Penny Draper, a local storyteller, called a meeting at the library for people who were interested in storytelling, and the Prince George Storytellers' Roundtable was formed. Through the Roundtable I had lots of opportunity to tell stories - my own and others - to a wide range of audiences, to learn from more experienced tellers and to share my experiences with new people.
With the publication of each new book I found that I was having more and more opportunities to do storytelling sessions, readings and school visits, and less and less time for actual writing. So after much agonizing, we decided that I would make yet another career leap and try writing and storytelling full time.
The fall of 1989 marked the beginning of my career as a full time writer / storyteller. Since then I have I spent about sixteen weeks between October and May each year travelling to schools and libraries across Canada and into the United States. I have enjoyed travelling - meeting many wonderful people along the way and seeing places I had never seen before. My school visits have given me a chance to explore new storytelling ideas and to find out first hand what "works" for both myself and my audiences. And, of course, sharing stories with enthusiastic and appreciative audiences is a very rewarding process in itself.
At the beginning of May 2006, I travelled to Nanaimo, B.C. to participate in the 20th annual Vancouver Island Children's Book Festival. This Festival has been one of my favorite venues and over the years I have been a presenter there seven or eight times. So this anniversary seemed like an appropriate date to use as a marker in my career; May 6, 2006 would mark my official retirement as an itinerant storyteller.
And perhaps as a writer.
This is a new season. Now seems like a good time to be quiet and to listen and watch to see what that new season brings.
Top of page: Richard's portrait by Marco
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