Author Profile – William Bell

For this assignment I have chosen to focus on the Canadian author, William Bell. Bell is Toronto born and now resides in Orillia, Ontario. It was at the Orillia Public Library that I completed a co-operative work term in collection development and I noted, at the time, that Orillia is a city of writers so I found it intriguing to discover that William Bell is one of them.

Bell has taught English to high school students for over thirty years. He has also taught at the university level and has presented at conferences. He has two master’s degrees, one in literature and the other in Education. Bell is an award winning author with over a dozen young adult books to his credit including: Metal Head (1987), Just Some Stuff I Wrote (2005), Stones (2001), Death Wind (1989), No Signature (1992), Five Days of the Ghost (1989), Forbidden City, Speak to the Earth (1994), The Golden Disk (1995), River My Friend (1996), Zack (1998), The Blue Helmet (2006), Crabbe (1986), and Alma (2005).

If you visit Bell’s website at www.orillia.org/williambell/ you will find teaching manuals to accompany his novels as well as frequently asked questions for students. He also includes his contact information in the event you want to reach him to do small group readings for your class or library.

Bell says he likes to write for young people because they are “the best audience: they are loyal to the writers they like and they are enthusiastic readers” but it becomes apparent when you read his work, that Bell also understands young people. He knows how to respectfully develop their characters in his novels, he gives them intellect and voice, he is also keenly aware of their point-of-view.

My first introduction to Bell’s work was in reading his novel, Zack, which I completed in one sitting. Zack is a story about a young man born to a black mother and a white Jewish father. He himself is black. He is a high school student who has moved with his parents from the city to the small town of Fergus, Ontario. When he discovers relics from slavery buried in the back yard Zack is moved to research the history of the town and then his own family history. He travels to the deep south where he meets his grandfather for the first time and quickly learns why he had never met him before. His trip south is a life altering event and he returns to the town of Fergus with new respect for his parents.

Bell’s work has been extensively published both in and outside of Canada, and has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese.

He has won the Belgium Prize for Excellence, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, and the Canadian Library Association Y/A book of the year. He has also been shortlisted for the White Pine Reader’s Choice Award and the Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award.