Bio Section

2010 - Kevin Major
Born in Stephenville, NL, Kevin Major graduated from Memorial University and then taught school for a number of years. He lived for 15 years on the Eastport Peninsula, and now resides in St. John's. He is married to Anne Crawford and they have two grown sons.

He is the author of 16 books, for both young people and adults. The first, Hold Fast, won several awards in Canada and was placed on the Hans Christian Andersen Honour List. The second, Far From Shore, was the winner of the first Canadian Young Adult Book Award. Others which followed include Blood Red Ochre and Eating Between the Lines, winner of the CACL Book-of-the-Year Award. In 1992 Kevin was given the Vicky Metcalf Award, for an outstanding body of work of significance to young people.

An adult novel, No Man's Land, about the Newfoundland Regiment in World War I, was published in 1995. Kevin adapted it for the stage, and it has been performed each summer for the past 10 years by Rising Tide Theatre in Trinity. His more recent books include a history of Newfoundland and Labrador: As Near To Heaven By Sea (a Canadian best-seller and finalist for the Pearson Non-Fiction Prize) and Ann and Seamus, released in 2003 and shortlisted for a total of eight awards. It has since been turned into an opera. Performed by Shallaway Choir, it has toured nationally and internationally.

A new play for Rising Tide Theatre, Lead Me Home, went on stage in Trinity in 2009, and is being performed there again this year. It centres on the sinking of the Cabot Strait ferry, the S.S. Caribou, by a German U-boat in October of 1942. A new adult novel, New Under the Sun, is set for release by Cormorant Books in 2010.