Ken Budd

Ken Budd has enjoyed a myriad of experiences. He has skydived (once) and snorkelled and SCUBA dived in Caribbean waters and on the Great Barrier Reef. He has swum with humpback whales off Maui, and trapped, tagged and tracked grizzlies in Montana. Hiking in the Badlands of Alberta, directing a wilderness backpacking program in Kananaskis Country, and beach combing off the West Coast of British Columbia have been a few of his life’s highlights. Growing up in his formative years in Saskatchewan has stained him most positively.

Though teaching and counselling was his master game for most of his professional life, Ken took a sabbatical after an interest in writing led him to the The Banff Centre where he studied with W.O. Mitchell. That adventure sent him on a journey producing and publishing books. He is now up to four dozen titles that he has shared with the public, including CARMANAH, Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rainforest, which he considers to be his most successful venture thus far. The title won both the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional BC Book Prize in British Columbia.

Upon retiring from the classroom, Ken operated SummerWild Productions while continuing his verve for writing fiction. The series, The Adventures of Buddy Williams, was his first offering in the Juvenile Fiction genre. Following that venture, he sold his boutique publishing company to a past student, who is now his editor: Robert David Marthaller.

Finally, after over a half-century of a love-hate relationship with the idea of writing a novel about a chance encounter with a perfect stranger, the octogenarian took advantage of being isolated during COVID, and two novels from that unexpected rendezvous ultimately resulted: No Killers, No Cowards.

Ken enjoys his retirement at his home on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.