A little bit about Peter Atwood
Blowing bubbles in Korea
Born in Halifax, Canada, I grew up in Ottawa and Winnipeg. My family’s roots are still in Nova Scotia, but it was in Winnipeg that I spent my formative years. During my time studying English Literature at the University of Winnipeg, I worked as an editorial assistant, self-published a book of poetry, and then founded Blizzard Publishing with a friend and fellow student.
My love for books, I soon discovered, had turned me into an erstwhile entrepreneur. But the challenges of running a small literary book publisher brought unexpected rewards. Within the first year, I attended the book editing workshop run by the (then) Banff Centre. During those intense short weeks at the University of Toronto, I met a number of wonderfully odd people—whose most odd feature was the calm, attentive, and diplomatic temperment they shared with me. All of them were working in publishing and wanted to be book editors. I felt like I had found my tribe.
I was an editor, but a publisher too. And in that role I was privileged to represent my company and my fellow literary publishers in the larger Canadian industry, serving on the boards of the Literary Press Group of Canada, the Association of Canadian Publishers, and Access Copyright, among others. It was around the table with representatives from publishing companies, media industries, and government that I got a taste for the copyright battles that are shaping much of the business world today. I enjoy this important debate and continue to participate when and where I can.
I now live in Ottawa, where I work for the Department of Foreign Affairs. You can find me every morning at the corner coffee shop writing what I expect will turn out to be a novel. The transition years found me living in Toronto, Seoul, and Cairo, where I worked, at times, as a literary agent, a senior book editor, a web editor, and a bureaucrat.
I share my life with a diplomat, and my son lives in Toronto.