Lee Gowan

Hey there! I'm Lee Gowan, and I write stories that dance along the edges of obsession, fame, and the peculiar magic of small-town Saskatchewan. (Trust me, there's more magic there than you'd think.)

I grew up on a cattle farm near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, where the horizons stretch forever and everyone knows your business before you do. Those early years taught me everything about human nature, storytelling, and how the most fascinating dramas often unfold in the quietest places. My family's been farming that same land for generations, and those prairie roots run deep in my writing.

Writing wasn't my first rodeo, though. I spent years working as a film editor and screenwriter in Toronto (talk about a culture shock for a prairie boy). That visual storytelling background sneaks into my prose - I can't help but see scenes unfold like frames in a movie. It's probably why readers tell me they can picture every detail of Broken Head, the fictional Saskatchewan town in "Make Believe Love."

Speaking of "Make Believe Love" - it's my love letter to small-town quirkiness and the sometimes thin line between passion and obsession. When I threw together a stalker, a journalist, and a librarian in Saskatchewan's only famous town, even I wasn't sure what would happen. (Spoiler alert: chaos. Beautiful, messy chaos.) The story explores how we all create narratives about ourselves and others, sometimes getting lost in the stories we want to believe.

I teach creative writing at the University of Toronto when I'm not crafting my own stories. There's something incredibly energizing about working with emerging writers - they remind me why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place. Plus, they keep me honest. Nothing sharpens your own craft like having to explain it to others.

My writing style? Well, I like to think it's like a Saskatchewan summer storm - it builds slowly, hits hard, and leaves you seeing the world a little differently afterward. I mix dark themes with unexpected humor (because let's face it, life's both tragic and hilarious), and I'm fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about love, fame, and identity.

Fair warning: I don't write conventional romances. My characters are complicated, sometimes unlikeable, and always very human. They make terrible decisions for what seem like perfectly good reasons at the time. (Don't we all?) But I promise to take you on a journey that'll make you think, feel, and maybe even look at your own small town a little differently.

When I'm not writing or teaching, you might find me back on the family farm, helping out during harvest or just soaking in those endless prairie skies. Or maybe I'm in Toronto, people-watching and collecting strange little stories that might end up in my next book. (Writers are professional eavesdroppers, after all.)

What can you expect from my books? Complex characters who'll get under your skin, vivid settings that become characters themselves, and stories that blur the lines between love and obsession, fame and infamy, reality and make-believe. Plus, there's usually at least one scene involving cattle, because you can take the boy off the farm, but... well, you know how that goes.

I believe the best stories are the ones that make us uncomfortable in the best possible ways - the ones that force us to question what we think we know about love, about each other, and about ourselves. That's what I aim for in every book I write.

So if you're ready for a story that's a little different, a little dark, and a lot Saskatchewan, come on in. Just remember: in my world, nothing is quite what it seems, and love isn't always what you expect it to be.

(And yes, I still know how to drive a tractor. Some skills you never forget.)