A director, actor, author, and teacher, Rod Carley was born in Brockville, Ontario, on February 19, 1962. He attended York University, graduating with a B.F.A. (Honours) in Acting/Directing (1985) and graduated the Humber School for Writers (2013). (link)

His second book, Kinmount, won the Silver Medal for Best Regional Fiction from the 2021 Independent Publishers Book Awards and was one of ten books long-listed for the 2021 Leacock Medal for Humour. (link) The story is about down-and-out director Dave Middleton, who feels Kinmount is the last place he wants to revisit yet there he is directing an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet for an eccentric producer. From cults to karaoke, anything that can go wrong does.

In choosing to use Kinmount as the setting for this book, it would seem Carley took a page from Gord Downie, but where Downie chose Bobcaygeon from a map because it rhymed with ‘constellation’, Carley chose Kinmount because “”the name was naturally funny,” Carley says, noting the word Kinmount contains a noun followed by a verb. “With apologies to the good people of Kinmount,” he adds, noting a similar apology appears in the book itself. Aside from the name and some reference to a history of logging, Carley says the Kinmount in his story is otherwise fictionalized.” (link)

He lives in North Bay, Ontario.

Books:

A Matter of Will (2017)

Kinmount (2020)

Grin Reaping (2022)