Reed Stirling

Born in Montreal in 1944, Reed Stirling has lived since the early seventies in the Cowichan Valley, BC. He writes when not painting landscapes, travelling, or taking coffee at The Drumroaster, a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Before retiring and taking up writing novels, he taught English Literature. Several talented students of his have gone on to become successful award-winning writers.

He and his wife built a log home in the hills of southern Vancouver Island, and survived totally off the grid for twenty-five years during which time the rooms in that house filled up with books, thousands of student essays were graded, and innumerable cords of firewood were split.

Literary output:

The Palimpsest Murders, published in September 2023, is a European travel mystery.

Set in Montreal, Séjour Saint-Louis (2021), dramatizes family conflicts.

Lighting The Lamp, a fictional memoir, was published in March 2020.

Shades Of Persephone, published in 2019, is a literary mystery set in Greece.

Shorter work has appeared over the years in a variety of publications including Dis(s)ent, Danforth Review, Fickle Muses, Fieldstone Review, and Humanist Perspectives.

Intrigue is of primary interest, with romantic entanglement an integral part of the action. Greek mythology plays a significant role in underpinning plots. Allusions to art, literature, philosophy, and religion serve a similar function. Reed sits down to write every day and tries to leave the desk having achieved at least a workable page. Frequently what comes of his effort amounts to no more than a serviceable paragraph, a single sentence, or a metaphor that might work in a context yet to be imagined.