Laura Farina - Author

Laura Farina grew up surrounded by stories – the ones read to her, the ones told to her and the ones she wrote for family and friends. She created her first publications in elementary school. She illustrated them, stuck shiny gold award stickers to their covers and sent them to readers by mail. Sometimes, when family members are cleaning out their cupboards they will return to Laura one of these publications – a diamond heist perpetuated by cats, a blatant rip-off of the Wizard of Oz, a piece of biting satire about the 1993 federal election. They serve as reminders that she has always been happiest when she’s making and sharing stories.#In her early teens, Laura fell in love with poetry. Her first two not-published-by-her books were collections of poetry for adults. She returned to writing picture books when her father turned sixty and she needed to get him a present. Laura’s father spent her childhood telling her wild stories – magicians, pirates and bubblegum trees – and she believed every one. For her present, she decided to sit down and make a story of all these stories, then turn it into a book like she used to do when she was a kid. She had so much fun writing it and began seeing new ideas for picture books everywhere.#This is the Path the Wolf Took is inspired by a young visual artist named Ida. When Ida was much younger than she is today, she created a wonderful scribbly piece of art and showed it to Laura saying, “This is the path the wolf took through the woods.” The line stuck in Laura’s head and she kept coming back to it until slowly, over time, it turned into a story.#Laura lives in Vancouver with her husband, who is an actor and puppeteer, and her son, who is really into cement trucks. She helps other writers find their stories as the coordinator of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University.~Instagram: @lauraeafarina