Susan Juby

Juby was born in Ponoka, Alberta,[1] and later moved to Smithers, British Columbia at the age of six.[1]

Juby initially attended fashion design school, but dropped out after several months.[1] She subsequently started a degree in English literature at the University of Toronto,[1] transferring to the University of British Columbia after two years.[1] After graduating she became an editor at a book publishing company called Hartley and Marks.[1]

Juby began her first book as a journal which she wrote on the bus on the way to work and at a local coffee shop. Thistledown published her first book Alice, I Think in 2000.[2] The book was named one of the essential 40 young adult novels by Rolling Stone Magazine. [3]

Juby completed a master's degree in publishing (MPub) from Simon Fraser University in 2002.[4] After publishing Alice, I Think (2000), HarperCollins offered her a contract for three books. Her second book Miss Smithers was published in 2004.[2] To complete the trilogy of Alice, I Think all under one publisher, the original book was bought by HarperCollins. Her third book under this contact was Alice McLeod: Realist at Last, published in 2005.[2] The Comedy Network developed Alice, I Think, a television sitcom based on the novel of the same name. The first episode aired in 2006.[5]

Juby went on to write Another Kind of Cowboy (2007) and a young adult detective novel, Getting the Girl (2008).[6] In 2010, Viking Canada published Nice Recovery, Juby's memoir tracing the time between her experience with teenage alcoholism until her sobriety at age 20.[7]

HarperCollins published Juby's next book in 2011, Home to Woefield (also known as The Woefield Poultry Collective in Canada). This was her first book aimed at an adult audience.[4] She would later write a sequel, Republic of Dirt (2015).[4] In 2016, Republic of Dirt won the Stephen Leacock Award.[8]

Other books by Juby include the dystopian young adult novel Bright's Light (2012), as well as The Truth Commission (2015), and The Fashion Committee (2017), a pair of young adult novels set in an art high school.

Juby was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2014.[9]

On February 22, 2020,[10] Juby read excerpts from two as-yet-unpublished works at the Vancouver Island Regional Library's Nanaimo Harbourfront branch. At Your Service is Juby's first crime novel for adults. Me 3 is a middle-grade novel that addresses the #MeToo movement from a child's perspective.[11]

Juby is an environmental rights activist in her community.[12] She is a creative writing professor at Vancouver Island University, in Nanaimo, British Columbia.[13]

• Alice, I Think (2000)
• I'm Alice (Beauty Queen?) (2004) (Published as Miss Smithers in the United States)
• Alice Macleod: Realist at Last (2005)
• Another Kind of Cowboy (2007)
• Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance and Cookery (2008)
• Nice Recovery (2010)
• The Woefield Poultry Collective (2011) (Published as Home to Woefield in the United States)
• Bright's Light (2012)
• Republic of Dirt (2015)
• The Truth Commission (2015)
• The Fashion Committee (2017)
• Mindful of Murder (2022)[14]
• At Your Service (Upcoming)[11]
• Me 3 (Upcoming)[11]

• Official website