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When he is not locked down by a pandemic, Ken McGoogan is a globe-trotting Canadian writer who survived shipwreck off Dar es Salaam, chased the ghost of Lady Franklin from Russell Square to Van Diemen’s Land, and placed a John Rae memorial plaque in the High Arctic. Ken has published fifteen books -- six histories, five biographies, three novels, and one ghosted work. His best-selling titles include Dead Reckoning, Celtic Lightning, Fatal Passage, 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, How the Scots Invented Canada, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Flight of the Highlanders.
Click on Books to find out more. Ken has won the Pierre Berton Award for History, the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography, the Canadian Authors’ Association History Award, the Writers' Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, and an American Christopher Award for “a work of artistic excellence that affirms the highest values of the human spirit.” He also landed a press fellowship that took him to University of Cambridge (Wolfson College) for three months. There he conceived his biography of John Rae, Fatal Passage, which gave rise to an award-winning, feature-length docudrama.
Before turning mainly to books, Ken worked as a journalist at the Toronto Star, the Montreal Star, and the Calgary Herald. He writes these days for Canadian Geographic, the Globe and Mail, Geographical magazine, and Celtic Life International. His Blog is a ballyhoo of unsolicited anecdotes, opinions and observations. Ken is a fellow of the Explorers' Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. With his partner, artist Sheena Fraser McGoogan, Ken has rambled from Sri Lanka to Tasmania, and from Malyasia to Greece and St. Kilda. He won a teaching excellence award from University of Toronto, teaches Creative Nonfiction (CNF) in the MFA program at University of King's College in Halifax, and loves nothing better than coming upon a captive audience with a microphone in his hand.
