Tuesday 7 June 2016

Jane Harris (Harris-Zsovan) has won a 2016 Alberta Literary Award. She received the James H. Gray Award for short non-fiction at the  Alberta Literary Awards Gala June 4th in Calgary, Alberta. Jane's essay, "The Unheard Patient," published in Alberta Views November 2015 issue, was also short-listed for a 2016 Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Showcase Award (essay category.)
Jane is also the author of Finding Home in the Promised Land, a personal history of homelessness and social exile (J. Gordon Shillingford, 2015) and Eugenics and the Firewall (J. Gordon Shillingford, 2010). 

Monday 2 November 2015

Media Release

Media Advisory
November 2, 2015
The Lethbridge launch of Jane Harris’s memoir, Finding Home in the Promised Land, a personal history of homelessness and social exile is this Saturday, November 7, 2015, at Chapter’s 701 - 1st Avenue South, Lethbridge.

Finding Home in the Promised Land is the fruit of Jane Harris’s journey through the wilderness of social exile after a violent crime left her injured and tumbling down the social ladder toward homelessness—for the second time in her life—in 2013. Her Scottish great-great grandmother Barbara`s portrait opens the door into pre-Confederation Canada. Her own story lights our journey through 21st Century Canada.
She asks why Canadians fell into accepting diminished dreams, and ignoring the obvious—that trauma and poverty are inextricably linked, and it is social exiles who fall through the cracks. She asks why Canada, a nation of exiles driven to create their own Promised Land came to accept
first poor houses; then soup kitchens, food banks, shelters, and a silent suffering class of working poor? Why did charity, another word for love, become cold bureaucracy? She uncovers that sad truth, that the taxes and charitable gifts the prosperous among us pay as tolls to avoid looking at the poor, fix nothing. Instead, they fund a poverty industry that keeps the dispossessed in an exile thornier than any back bush squatter’s camp. But she also uncovers a path out of the bureaucratic wilderness that could eliminate social exile in Canada.
“On a personal level I had to retrace my own path into social exile. I had to come to terms with my own suffering, but I also had to know why 21st Century Canada traps some of us in poverty. I had to know how the place my own hard-working ancestors thought would be their children’s children’s Promised Land, became just another place of hungry exile to hundreds of thousands of its children.”
Jane Harris turns complex research into engaging scenes and easily understood messages.
Finding Home in the Promised Land is her second book to be published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing. The first, Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada’s Nasty Little Secret, was published in 2010.
Jane has also contributed to two Canadian anthologies. Her articles about business, personal finance, history, faith, politics and social issues have appeared in more than a dozen publications including the Winnipeg Free Press, Canadian Capital, The National Post, Alberta Views, Alberta Venture, Lethbridge Herald, and The Anglican Planet.

Media Contact:
Jane Harris
Phone: 403 381-3390
Email: jhz27@telus.net



Wednesday 30 September 2015

It's out! Finding Home in the Promised Land a personal history of homelesssness and social exile is now in print and heading to bookstores. I will be at the Whistler Writers' Festival, October 16-18th. More Tour and launch news to follow soon!

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Notice Board: Jane Harris (Harris-Zsovan) has a  forthcoming book and a new website: janeharrisbooks.wordpress.com. Her new book, Finding Home in the Promised Land, a personal history of homelessness and social exile in Canada is being published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing. It will  be out by Fall 2015.

SEPTEMBER RELEASE UPDATE: Finding Home in the Promised Land: A Personal History of Homelessness and Social Exile is the fruit of Jane Harris’s journey through the wilderness of social exile after a violent crime left her injured and tumbling down the social ladder toward homelessness –for the second time in her life—in 2013. Her Scottish great-great grandmother Barbara`s portrait opens the door into pre-Confederation Canada. Her own story lights our journey through 21st Century Canada.
She asks why Canadians fell into accepting diminished dreams, and ignoring the obvious—that trauma and poverty are inextricably linked, and it is social exiles who fall through the cracks. She asks why Canada, a nation of exiles driven to create their own Promised Land came to accept first poor houses; then soup kitchens, food banks, shelters, and silent suffering class of working poor? Why did charity, another word for love, become cold bureaucracy? She uncovers that sad truth, that the taxes and charitable gifts the prosperous among us pay as tolls to avoid looking at the poor, fix nothing. Instead, they fund a poverty industry that keeps the dispossessed in an exile thornier than any back bush squatter’s camp. But she also uncovers a path out of the bureaucratic wilderness that could eliminate social exile in Canada.
Jane Harris turns complex research into engaging scenes and easily understood messages.Finding Home in the Promised Land is her second book to be published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing. The first Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada’s Nasty Little Secret was published in 2010.
Jane has also contributed to two Canadian anthologies. Her articles about business, personal finance, history, faith, politics and social issues have appeared in more than a dozen publications including the Winnipeg Free Press, Canadian Capital, The National Post, Alberta Views, Alberta Venture, Lethbridge Herald, and The Anglican Planet.
She is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta.