Chris Benjamin is a Halifax freelance writer who has worked in Indonesia, Toronto and Ghana. In Ghana he worked as a full-time journalist writing about the financially challenged nation's efforts to improve healthcare, justice, transportation, education and housing.
His first novel, Drive-by Saviours was short-listed for both Canada Reads and a ReLit Award and won the H.R. Percy Prize. His first non-fiction book, Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada (Nimbus, 2011) won the APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award and was a finalist for the Evelyn Richardson Non-fiction Prize.
The winning chapter titled Creation Story is from his book The Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, published by Nimbus Publishing in 2014. It is the story of how the only residential school in Atlantic Canada came to be. Despite testimony from the churches and state, for the Truth & Reconciliation Commission regarding previous efforts to eradicate indigenous culture via the residential school system, the institutional histories of individual schools tend to remain shadowed.
Chris now writes news features for magazines and narrative research reports for NGOs. He has written for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and many other magazines.
chrisbenjaminwriting.com
@benjaminwrites
Nimbus Publishing book available here
