About LDM

Laurel Deedrick-Mayne’s debut novel, A Wake For The Dreamland, won the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, the Whistler Independent Book Award and was on Edmonton’s Best Seller List more than 65 times. She has been a guest at more than 35 book clubs, public reading events and panels in Central Alberta, including Calgary’s Distinguished Writers 25th Anniversary Celebration.

In 2019, Laurel also worked with Caitlin Press to re-introduce When Days Are Long, the long-forgotten best-selling memoir of her Great Aunt Amy Wilson, which explores Wilson’s work with Indigenous Peoples in Canada’s north in the mid-20th century. 

Laurel has had her work featured in WestWord (Magazine of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta) and Avenue, Edmonton’s Lifestyle magazine. As well as contributing to the Centenary Edition of The Forty-Niner (Magazine of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment), Laurel has had poetry published in the global-reaching WordCity Literary Journal.

A third-generation letter and story writer, Laurel’s work celebrates the history of the love that dare not speak its name while paying tribute to the generation who took the time to hold on to family letters, clippings, stories and poetry – family treasures that continue to inspire new stories.

Through her workshop, Readers and Writers of the Lost Art, Laurel supports YouthWrite Canada where she re-introduces young people to cursive writing and offers hands-on experience in deciphering handwritten letters and documents. By engaging with the next generation, she hopes to inspire historical fiction writers of the future.

For her next novel, inspired by the famous song from WWI, If You Were The Only Girl in the World, Laurel is working on the story of a Canadian nurse and a WWI British medic who is captured and sent to the Gustrow Prison Camp deep in a German forest. Here, he is made to play ‘the Dame’ in the camp’s musical revue, The Bing Boys, which mimics the hit show of the same name running simultaneously at the Alhambra Theatre at home in London. Only the memories of a brief but binding connection made at a Casualty Clearing Station, keep both of them believing they will meet again.