Timothy Taylor

Photo: Tim Fraser for National Post

Timothy Taylor is a Vancouver novelist who recently completed The Blue Light Project (2011), a novel about a has-been journalist who gets called to a bizarre hostage-taking. His first novel was Stanley Park (2001), and his second Story House (2006).

Three down, four to go. In Quill & Quire interview in 2006, he told Cheri Hanson that the novel was favourite form, and that he'd have confidence calling himself a novelist (as opposed to merely a writer) when he'd written seven.

Taylor has an interesting history. He was born in Venezuela (but came here very young) and he has a degree in Economics from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and an MBA from Queens. After four years in the world of finance, he decided he really wanted to be a writer, so he applied all those business skills to a building a writing career.

At first he kept up a consulting business to pay the bills; now he works as a writer of novels, as well as non-fiction for magazines. He also does some film work.

In 2000, Taylor won the Journey Prize; indeed, he was the first writer to have three stories in the same edition of the Journey Prize Anthology. In 2002 his short story collection Silent Cruise came out.