Photo is in IMG-2011-03-30 B12_6846
Sarah de Leeuw is the author of Front Lines, Portrait of Caregivers in Northern British Columbia, which will be launched at 2 p.m. Saturday at UNBC.
To know people are inspired into action by the landscape of Northern British Columbia is something local author Sarah de Leeuw knows something about.
De Leeuw, a two-time CBC literary award winner, has written a non-fiction book of creative essays called Front Lines, Portraits of Caregivers in Northern British Columbia to be launched at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Dr. Donald Rix Northern Health Sciences Centre at UNBC.
"This is a book about amazing, resilient, thoughtful people who are practicing and caring for other people in Northern British Columbia," said de Leeuw, who grew up on Haida Gwaii. "I want the book to say this is a wonderful landscape in which to live, to love, to play and to practice."
The idea for the book was presented to de Leeuw by Dr. David Snadden, vice-provost medicine, UNBC, regional associate dean, Northern B.C., UBC, right after de Leeuw won a CBC literary award a couple of years ago.
"Dave Snadden walked into my office and showed me a book called Single Handed that was printed in the early '90s in the UK about general practitioners in rural areas," said de Leeuw.
He asked her what she thought of writing a book on people in the North who are health-care providers and accompanying those with pictures.
"He wanted me to really talk about the amazing face of health-care provision in the North and I said that would be amazing," said de Leeuw, who is a published creative writer. "I am now a faculty member in a faculty of medicine, so sometimes trying to figure out what to do with those things really allows for innovative projects to come to the forefront."
Putting together ideas about practicing medicine in rural communities in the North and discovering the role of a creative writer and social sciences and humanity researcher in a faculty of medicine is challenging, said de Leeuw.
"Those things all come together in a really neat and creative way resulting in a book of essays on health-care providers in the northern health region," she added. From concept to completion it took about two years to write.
To get the stories and take the photos for the book, writer and photographer, Tim Swanky, travelled separately.
"It was a really interesting process because Tim generally photographed people ahead of me, but it was amazing to find the similarities between the stories he told in his photographs and the stories that I learned and ended up writing about," said de Leeuw. "In many cases I hadn't seen the photographs and yet there was this incredible continuity of story. It demonstrates how strong people's stories are."
Visit http://creekstonepress.com for more information about the book.
