Chique 30 Minutes With Author Jacqueline Windh

Jacqueline Windh is both a writer (also photographer) and a scientist - and more and more, she is really appreciating what she can do by combining these two things. She did her Bachelors degree in Geology at McGill University, Montréal, Canada, and then her Ph.D. at The University of Western Australia. She worked as a consultant to the mining industry in Australia, Canada and South America, all the while honing her skills as a photographer - spending lots of time travelling and in the outdoors, both through her work and in her time off. In 2000 she decided to pack in the geology, mainly because of the environmental issues and her own feelings about working in an industry that supports resource extraction and consumerism, and decided to work in a field that both satisfied her artistic side as well as that was more within her beliefs of how we should treat our planet. She focused mainly on the photography at first, but soon got into writing. She still does photography, but writing has really become her main activity. She has four books published (two that she photographed and wrote herself, and two that she co-wrote with others). She is now working on her MFA in Creative Writing through the University of British Columbia and she is moving away from the journalism and non-fiction and more into creative writing: fiction, memoir, and also having a lot of fun blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction - what “did” versus what “could” happen (which is what her next book, My Secret Sasquatch and Other Possibilities, will deal with).