Gabriele's Bio

My mom and dad came to Canada from Germany in 1953. I knew they had both been in the Soviet gulag after World War II, and had promised themselves to leave the past behind and start over here in Canada. They stayed silent about the "old country", which was okay when I was little, but later I got curious.
I decided early in my life I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn't tell anyone for fear people would make fun of me, or that I would fail. When I went to university I studied German literature, focusing on the 20th century, I think I wanted to find my parents' stories in the novels I studied.
But the stories of the German Russians was obscured by the Iron Curtain of communism, and I have been inspired to share my parents' amazing stories by writing them myself.
The Kulak's Daughter, my first novel, began as a story my mother told my daughter about when she misbehaved as a little girl. Read the story behind that story.

I love to see the world through a child's point of view. Read an excerpt of a work in progress, also based on my mother's childhood, and some of my other writing too.