Getting 2 Know Tanya Lester

If you could do anything for anyone, what would you do?

I would like to provide anyone (everyone) with the ability to take a risk in order to do what she or he is passionate about.

What do you think readers would be most surprised to learn about you?

Until I reached the age of eighteen years old, I lived in four very small communities. For most of those years, I lived at Victoria Beach, Manitoba, on Lake Winnipeg in a community of 200 people who were mostly relatives on the Lebanese side of my family.

I also lived in two First Nations communities where my mother taught school. One is Hole Water or Winnipegow, Manitoba, on the northern part of Lake Winnipeg. Today, many who live there are well known for the healing circles that they have established in order to successfully help victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. The other community is Poorman’s, Saskatchewan. There, as I waited for the school bus each morning, the sounds of the medicine man beating his drum in the morning light soothed me.

As well, I lived briefly in Minnedosa, Manitoba which is very close to Neepawa, Manitoba where Margaret Laurence lived (one of my favourite novelists because she wrote with such passion), as a child and young woman.

Learn more about Tanya Lester’s book Confessions of a Tea Leaf Reader