Chris McMahen

Born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, a very playful imagination has followed him through life. When he started teaching elementary school, Chris discovered that writing was a perfect outlet for this untamed imagination.

Buddy Concrackle’s Amazing Adventure, based upon a family driving trip to the Oregon Coast, was published by Coteau Books in 1996. In the fall of 2007, Orca Books published Klutzhood, a novel about displacement and peer pressure set in the British Columbia interior. In writing this novel, Chris drew upon his storied career as a hopelessly incompetent recreational hockey player, as well as the experiences of a city kid moving to a small town. Klutzhood was a finalist for the Willow Award, The Young Readers Choice Award of Saskatchewan and was chosen for the 2009-2010 Reading Link Challenge in B.C. Libraries. In the spring of 2009, Orca Books published his third novel for young readers, Tabloidology which was also selected by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre for their Best Books 2010. In writing Tabloidology, Chris was able to dip into the files of his vast tabloid newspaper collection and bring his favourite stories to life. His fourth novel, Box of Shocks, published in the fall of 2011, was inspired by a friend’s eye-opening visit to his old childhood home. Box of Shocks won the Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award in 2013. The sequel to Box of Shocks, The Box Talks, was published in 2020. Also released in 2020 was his series My Misadventures with Simon and Keely.

Chris currently lives in Salmon Arm, British Columbia where he loves to ramble along forest trails on his skis or his mountain bike.