I was born June 7, 1945, to a Low-German speaking Russian Mennonite father who immigrated to Canada in the mid-1920’s, and a non-communal or Prairieleute Hutterite mother, a granddaughter to Rev. Paul Tschetter, leader of these “people of the prairies.”

I grew up on a small farm 35 km. west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where I attended a one-room, rural schoolhouse. As the middle child in a family of six children, I was separated from my older and younger siblings by several years. This allowed me to spend hours alone exploring the woods and fields and biking along the country roads. I don’t recall feeling lonely; there was so much to imagine, think about, and do.

Early on I felt a restless need to create, first with discarded cereal and Jell-O boxes, scissors and glue, later with scraps of wood and my father’s tools. At the age of 10 I discovered the deep satisfaction of using words to create little stories. I became intrigued by rhythm and rhyme and began to write poetry. Arranging phrases into rhymes was very personal and I didn’t know anyone who wrote, so I kept my scribbler of writings a secret. I recall my embarrassment when I wrote a poem for a Grade 7 Language assignment and my teacher posted it on the bulletin board for the other students to read. My writing was no longer a secret.

My enthusiasm for writing continued and in my senior year of high school my English teacher encouraged me to find my place in that field.

The spring of 1965 marked two important milestones in my life: I married my husband, Ray Mierau, and my first freelance article, for which I was paid $12.60, was published in The Western Producer. The following twenty-five years were filled with caring for our three children, precious random hours of freelance writing (often carried out in unusual places and at uncommon times), and employment as a bookstore salesclerk, advertising account rep, newspaper columnist, reporter and editor.

I attended creative writing classes for some time but lost interest when my attempts at writing fiction went nowhere. Perhaps the timing hadn’t been right for me; I thrived on researching and writing newspaper articles and reporting.

My husband and I relocated from the small prairie town of Langham, SK to a country property near Sussex, NB in 1995. Although I had taken a break from writing several years earlier, I soon felt the urge to create again and for 15 years I produced candles and small woodcrafts for craft stores and weekend sales.

By 2010 a cast of fictional characters had developed in my mind. Efforts to dismiss them were futile and in early August of that year I began to write my novel, The Lost Encore. Two years later I had completed the first draft in longhand and the second draft on my computer. Meanwhile, we had moved to Manitoba where, after two years of revising and editing, my novel became available for sale in mid-November 2014 and I knew the thrill of holding my published book in my hand. It continues to be an amazing journey.

Doreen Mierau