Penny, Louise

The Canadian author, Louise Penny, grew up in Toronto. She studied Journalism and worked as a TV and radio producer. She devoted herself to tough journalism and hard news, and said herself that she became "cynical, sarcastic, self-satisfied and supercilious". And an alcholic too. When she left journalism, there was above all one thing she took with her: the art of listening. "A good interviewer doesn’t talk too much, she listens. Closely and carefully." Something which she considers she has had use of since she became a full-time writer in 1996. By then, she had married a doctor who worked at Montreal Children's Hospital and had settled in an old house in a village surrounded by maples outside Montreal close to the American border.