About
Gwen K. Harvey is the author of The Acquisition of Elizabeth Grace and The Girlfriend Book. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Certificate program at the University of Toronto and is enrolled in GRANTA’S Literary Novel Writing Program out of the U.K. She has completed a third novel and is now working on a fourth novel inside the GRANTA course.
“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. Over time she completed seven courses, including introductory and advanced courses in Novel Fiction Writing and an elective in Screenwriting.
“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!”
In 2023, Gwen’s second novel, The Acquisition of Elizabeth Grace, was picked up by RE:BOOKS Publishing. It was released in March 2024.
In 2025 Gwen completed her Creative Writing Certificate at the University of Toronto, receiving Honors for her final project – the first 25,000 words of her third novel. In January 2026, she completed this novel and is now exploring how to release it.
In July 2026 Gwen was accepted into the GRANTA Literary Novel Writing Program out of the U.K. She has begun her fourth novel inside this course, working alongside 15 other writers.
Gwen is the mother of three and, with her husband, and Bernese Mountain dog, Bear, she divides her time between Toronto and the rolling hills of Mulmur, Ontario.