Here are Some Links I Have Found Useful:

Authors Booking Service This organization books author visits (including mine) to Ontario

Canscaip The Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers. Check out their Packaging Your Imagination conference held every November in Toronto. It's a must for aspiring kid lit authors and illustrators.

La Courte Echelle A Quebec publishing company that has recently released Poupée, the French translation of my book On the Game

James Lorimer & Company This is one of the companies that has published some of my books

The Montreal Gazette

Marianopolis College

Nederlanders in Montreal A website devoted to Montrealers of Dutch descent

Orca Book Publishers

The Quebec Writers' Federation This organization offers excellent support, including writing workshops, to aspiring and established authors

Rover - CULTURE & CONVERSATION A Montreal-based arts and culture website

sophielit.ca Montreal-based teacher Sophie Gagnon writes about French-language teen fiction

TeachingBooks A resource for schools and libraries that allows readers to hear their favourite authors discuss and read from their work

Links to Some of My Author Friends' Websites:

www.anitadaher.com Anita Daher is a Manitoba based YA author. She's also a lot of fun!

www.calla.com

www.catherineausten.com Catherine Austen is a Quebec author. Her novel Walking Backward was nominated for the QWF 2010 Prize for Children's and YA Literature

www.carolejeantremblay.com

www.gilliansze.com Gillian Sze is an up-and-coming Montreal poet

www.sites.google.com/site/leahperl/home  Leah-Perl Shollar is a Pittsburg-based picture book author with a special interest in Jewish subjects. We met and hit it off at a 2010 Young Authors Workshop here in Montreal

www.lori-weber.com Like me, Montreal YA writer Lori Weber has published with James Lorimer and Co. And like me, she teaches CEGEP -- in her case at John Abbott College

www.mahtabnarsimhan.com Mahtab Narsimhan lives in Toronto. Her YA novel The Third Eye won the 2009 Silver Birch Award

www.rinasingh.com Children's author Rina Singh and I go way back -- to the days when we just dreamed of writing for kids (and having kids of our own!)

www.sarahnharvey.com Sarah Harvey isn't only an extraordinary YA writer, she's one of my editors at Orca Book Publishers

Links to Some of My Other Friends' (who are not book authors, but who do other super interesting stuff!) Websites:

www.hotdogsalldressed.com My BFF Viva Singer is the founder and owner of this very cool dog collar manufacturing company, based in Montreal

www.inspirationsbystella.com Stella Papadopoulos is a Montreal illustrator. This is her Etsi site

www.judithcrawley.com Judith Crawley is a Montreal photographer whose work I admired for many years before we became friends

www.katejohnson.com Kate Johnson is a Montreal-based medical reporter

www.probaseweb.com Vince and Cindy Murphy are the web designers who helped me create this website. They live in Kemptville, Ontario

www.thomaskneubuhler.com Thomas Kneubuhler is a prize-winning visual artist working with photography. I've had the pleasure of traveling with him several times to Nunavik!

www.travelingteachergirl.blogspot.com Crystal Speedie is a teacher at Innalik School in Inukjuak, Nunavik. This is Crystal's blog

photographed by Paul Doumit

It’s a good thing Monique Polak has a lot of energy, because she does a lot of stuff. Monique taught English and Humanities at Marianopolis College in Montreal for 35 years. She is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Montreal Gazette and in Postmedia newspapers across the country. In 2016, Monique was the CBC/Quebec Writers' Federation inaugural writer-in-residence. Monique has also been published in Maclean's Magazine.

But what Monique likes to do most of all is write for young people. She is the author of 34 books. These include 27 novels: Flip Turn (James Lorimer, 2004), No More Pranks (Orca, 2004); On the Game (James Lorimer, 2005); Home Invasion (Orca, 2005); All In (James Lorimer, 2006); Finding Elmo (Orca, 2007);  Scarred (James Lorimer, 2007); 121 Express (Orca, 2008); What World Is Left (Orca, 2008); The Middle of Everywhere (Orca, 2009); Junkyard Dog (Orca, 2009); Miracleville (Orca, 2011); Pyro (Orca, 2012); So Much It Hurts (Orca, 2013); Straight Punch (Orca, 2014); Hate Mail (Orca, 2014); Learning the Ropes (Orca, 2015); Forensics Squad Unleashed (Orca, 2016); Leggings Revolt (Orca 2016), Bullies Rule Orca, 2017); Princess Angelica, Camp Catastrophe (Orca, 2018); Planet Grief (Orca, 2018); Princess Angelica, Part-Time Lion Trainer (Orca, 2019); The Taste of Rain (Orca, 2019); Room for One More (Kar-Ben, 2019); Princess Angelica, Junior Reporter (Orca, 2020) and most recently, For the Record (Owlkids, 2022). Monique is also the author of five non-fiction books for young readers: Passover: Festival of Freedom (Orca, 2016); I Am a Feminist: Claiming the F-Word in Turbulent Times (Orca, 2019); Why Humans Work: How Jobs Shape Our Lives and Our World (Orca, 2022); Open Science: Knowledge for Everyone (Orca, 2023); and Remember This: The Fascinating World of Memory (Orca, 2024); and one board book Passover Family (Orca, 2018). Monique has also written a picture book The Brass Charm, illustrated by Marie Lafrance (Scholastic, 2022).

Monique is a three-time winner of the Quebec Writers' Federation Prize for Children's and YA Literature, recently renamed the QWF Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children's and Young Adult Literature. She won the prize in 2021 for Room for One More, a historical novel set in Montreal during the Second World War; in 2014 for Hate Mail, the story of a boy reluctant to admit the new boy at his school -- a child with autism -- is his cousin; and in 2009 for her historical novel What World Is Left, inspired by her mother's experience in a Nazi concentration camp. The American Library Association's publication, Booklist, gave What World Is Left a starred review, describing it as "heartbreaking" and "an important addition to the Holocaust curriculum."

Click here to listen to an audio clip of Monique discussing and reading from What World Is Left. Or here to check out a cool new book trailer for What World Is Left.

Room for One More was nominated for the 2020 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. Flip Turn, On the Game, All In, Finding Elmo, and Scarred were all selected by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre for its Our Choice lists. Home Invasion was named a Popular Paperback by the American Library Association. All In was nominated for an Arthur Ellis crime-writing prize. Resource Links included Scarred on its Best Books for 2007 list.

Monique lives in Montreal, where many of her stories are set. In addition to writing and teaching, she enjoys cooking, jogging and puttering around her house. She has one grown daughter.

HOW DID MONIQUE GET INTO WRITING?

Monique Polak photographed by Paul Doumit

Monique knew from a young age that she wanted to do something creative. She would have liked to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and become a painter, so for her tenth birthday, she asked for an easel and a book about painting. She got the easel and the book, but discovered she was not very good at painting – so she decided to become a writer instead, because she’d always loved inventing stories.

Monique adores stories – this includes not only stories inside books, but also stories people tell. When Monique enrolled as an undergraduate student at McGill University in Montreal, it seemed natural for her to study English Literature. She did her Master’s degree at Concordia University, where she wrote her thesis about Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

But studying the great authors left Monique feeling a little overwhelmed. Though she never stopped writing diary entries and letters to friends and relatives, it would be more than 10 years before she began writing professionally.

Monique’s writing career began with journalism. She sold her first piece – a book review – to the Montreal Gazette in 1991. Since then, she has written for almost every section of the newspaper, including city news, entertainment and lifestyles, travel and even business.

But what Monique really dreamt of doing was writing a novel for young adults. But breaking into the children’s writing market was far harder than she expected. She wrote and rewrote several manuscripts before she made her first sale to Orca Book Publishers. At about the same time, Monique got a phone call from Hadley Dyer, who was, at the time, children’s book editor at James Lorimer and Co. Hadley had read one of Monique’s manuscripts. “It doesn’t suit our needs, but we want to know whether you’ll write a book for us.” Of course, Monique said yes. And so, she went from having no publishers to having two of them!

Monique brings her teaching and journalism experience to her novels. Several of her stories take place in schools, and Monique gets many story ideas from her students. For example, the book Scarred, which is about a young woman who cuts herself, was based on the many stories students have told Monique about their problems with self-mutilation. Monique also researched self-mutilation for a feature story she wrote for The Montreal Gazette.

Two of Monique’s other books, On the Game and All In, grew out of well-publicized newspaper stories. On the Game, which deals with teenage prostitution, was inspired by a shocking case in Quebec City in which girls from seemingly ordinary families were recruited as prostitutes. All In, which looks at the problem of teen gambling, was inspired by events at a private high school in Montreal.

WANT TO KNOW A LITTLE MORE ABOUT WHERE MONIQUE GETS HER IDEAS?

Monique visits a school

Monique is always on the lookout for stories. And she believes that when you’re on the lookout for stories, you’ll find lots of them!

As a freelance journalist, Monique is always hunting for stories. For instance, last summer, Monique wrote a story for the Montreal Gazette about the challenges faced by paramedics. The research she did for that story has worked its way into the new fiction manuscript Monique is writing.

This is not the first time that Monique's feature writing has found its way into her novels. Here's another example: several years ago, Monique was researching a newspaper story about Montreal pet stores. At one of the stores she visited, Monique, who’s a bird lover, met a beautiful cockatoo named Elmo. He inspired her novel Finding Elmo, which happens to be set in… you guessed it…a Montreal pet store.

Monique also gets ideas for characters from real life. For instance, a friend told Monique about a man who has an obsession with making lists – and so she gave this quirky trait to the mom in Finding Elmo. At the swimming pool this summer, Monique met a gentleman named Chester. She liked his name so much that she is hoping to name one the characters in an upcoming project Chester!

HOW DOES MONIQUE GO ABOUT WRITING A BOOK?

Sometimes, Monique uses an outline. Other times, she just goes for it, letting the story tell itself. Monique believes there are advantages to either approach. Having an outline reduces some of the stress associated with coming up with a workable plot. Writing without an outline tends to be a little more exciting.

When Monique is working on a new book, she tries to write five days a week. She sets herself a “quota” – the number of words she needs to write each day, usually it’s between 500 and 1,000 depending on the length of her project and her deadline – and then she stays at her computer until it’s done.

Of course, the re-writing takes as much time, and often more time, than the first draft!

WHAT’S MONIQUE UP TO NOW?

Monique at a book signing

Monique is promoting her latest books, Leggings Revolt, Forensics Squad Unleased and Passover: Festival of Freedom. All three books were released in spring 2016. The first two are novels; Passover: Festival of Freedom is Monique's first non-fiction book.

Because Monique can't stop writing, she is already hard at work on another novel. In this one, Monique explores the difficult topic of how kids handle grief. Monique recently finished the first "messy" draft of that project, and she plans to spend fall 2016 on a giant re-write.

For a really up-to-date report on what Monique is up to, check out her blog. And leave a comment. Monique loves to hear from readers!