One Woman's Century: The Collected Essays of Kay Parley

A remarkable, one-of-a-kind collection. Filled with insight, anecdotes, and fascinating snapshots from the past, ONE WOMAN'S CENTURY is a celebration of the life and work of iconic Saskatchewan author Kay Parley, covering the full scope of her work from 1938 all the way to 2024. That's 86 years of her writing!

At the age of 101, Kay is still going strong, with a regular column in Folklore Magazine and the Wolseley Bulletin. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Inside the Mental: Silence, Stigma, Psychiatry, and LSD about her time at the Weyburn Mental Institute in the 1950s, first as a patient, and then as a psychiatric nurse, and of the magical novel The Grass People about a world tucked out of sight beneath the leafy plants and tall grass we walk by every day, as well as the dark mystery The Monkey Vault.

In 2019, Kay Parley was the subject of an award winning documentary, A Mind of Her Own, by filmmaker Judith Silverthorne. A talented painter, educator, and author, Kay worked with Lorne Greene at CBC Radio and taught sociology for many years at the Kelsey Institute in Saskatoon. ONE WOMAN'S CENTURY is the first comprehensive collection of her work, spanning the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression to the climate change of today. Timely, heart-felt and endlessly fascinating.

Kay Parley grew up eating oatmeal porridge, singing "By Yon Bonnie Banks..." and listening to the Buchan brrr. The Moffat community south of Wolseley, Sask. was chiefly settled by people from Scotland, but there were other cultures around. Kay's mother was an enthusiastic reader and encouraged her daughter to love books. Partly due to ambition and partly because of financial ups and downs, Kay's life became a succession of careers. She trained as a commercial artist, taught school, did stenographic work, became a psychiatric nurse and spent her last 18 years teaching social sciences at a technical college. She never married and travelled very little, once to Scotland and once to Trinidad. Counting three on the internet, Kay has published seven books. What's the best thing about such a varied life? "All the wonderful friends I made along the way."