Arthur Slade

A ranch in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan raised Arthur Slade, who took an English honours degree at Saskatchewan in 1989 and paid for the early writing years auditing hotel books at night and writing radio copy. His novel Dust won the Governor General's Award for children's literature in 2001. He also wrote a Victorian spy series. The Hunchback Assignments (2009) hands Modo, a foundling with a misshapen body and the ability to hold another face for a few hours, to a secret British agency run by Mr Socrates; it won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award in 2010. The Dark Deeps sends Modo and fellow agent Octavia across the North Atlantic after the Ictíneo, an undersea machine tangled up with rumours of a sea monster and a city of pirates. Empire of Ruins (2011) moves the hunt to the Queensland rainforest and the God Face, a relic said to unhinge anyone who sees it. Slade lives in Saskatoon.