About
Gwen K. Harvey is the author of The Acquisition of Elizabeth Grace and The Girlfriend Book. She is a member of the Creative Writing Certificate program at the University of Toronto and is working on her third novel.
“I fell in love with writing at the age of nine when I moved from Toronto to Surrey, England. We had three different English classes – Grammar, Literature and Composition. Each week in our composition class we were given a sentence and asked to write a story. I remember how the characters and plot would swirl around in my mind and then tumble out onto the page. It was magical.”
At age fourteen, Gwen returned to Canada for high school. Her extracurricular activities were Theatre Arts, public speaking and leading the student council as President in her final year.
“While some writing may have been involved in my supplemental high school activities, the only writing I recall was my periodic journaling about daily life and occasional travel.”
Graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto, Gwen entered the financial services industry. She founded a family wealth strategy firm in Toronto and has served as a director on a variety of charitable boards.
“While I enjoyed writing business commentary, I was always fascinated with the complexities of human connections and how intimate relationships and family dynamics build and break under pressure. In the fall of 2020 as we all adjusted to more time at home through Covid, I wrote ‘The Girlfriend Book‘. It morphed from a short story into a novel. The nine-year-old within me, who loved writing stories, had returned!”
In the fall of 2021 Gwen enrolled in the Creative Writing Certificate program at the University of Toronto. She completed introductory and advanced courses, with a focus on writing the fiction novel. As part of completing the certificate, she plans to add a screenwriting course.
“I was amazed to learn how writing had a language of its own: Point of view, the 3 Act Structure, ‘Show don’t tell’, and the dos and don’ts surrounding clichés, dialogue and subtext. However, my confidence grew as I read widely and realized there are so many ways to write a great story. There is no box to fit into – it’s okay to just imagine and write!”
Gwen’s second novel, The Acquisition of Elizabeth Grace, was released in 2024 by RE:BOOKS Publishing. Gwen is the mother of three and, alongside her husband, and Bernese Mountain dog, Bear, she divides her time between Toronto and the rolling hills of Mulmur, Ontario.