When Hope Morritt began her writing career, she was chiefly interested in historical fiction.  With her first novel Sarah, she realized she had a talent for noir, the bizarre, often black side of life.  However, even with noir she did not desert her first love, history.  Her books have been set in the Cree country west of Edmonton , in the Yukon during the building of the Alaska Highway in 1942, and in the Nahanni country of the Northwest Territories during the Second World War

            When she first began to write novels in  the 1950s and 60s, female authors were not supposed to write about hard-core, tough subjects like the seedy side of life.  In 1982, Morritt interviewed the well-known Canadian poet, Irving Layton, for the London Free Press.  He said, “Female authors are too inhibited.  They have to hang loose, write about all phases of life, and to hell with the world.”  She took his advice, and her next book, Land of the Fireweed, (a memoir, published in 1986 by Alaska Northwest Publishing) is peppered with the grit of human lives in the frost-bound Yukon .  Her most recent novel, Palace of Diamonds , published by eXtasy books, has history, grit and sex intertwined, and is set during the Hippie Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

            If you would like to contact Hope Morritt with comments or questions about her work, you can reach her by e-mail at   hope@hopemorritt.ca  or P.O. Box 183, Sarnia On. N7T7H9  She will be happy to visit your book club, school, history club or participate in books signings, readings and other such events.