WILLIAM BELL, Author, Educator

William Bell was born in Toronto in 1945 and went to school there until he graduated from the Ontario College of Education in 1970, immediately after which he moved to Orillia, where he has lived ever since. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Literature and a Master of Education Curriculum and Administration, both from the University of Toronto. In Orillia, he has been a high school English teacher and head of the English department at Orillia District Collegiate, Simcoe County Board of Education, and in China, an instructor at the Harbin University of Science and Technology and the Foreign Affairs College. He has also been an instructor at the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Bell has frequently been invited to give presentations at conferences and to speak to elementary and secondary school students on creative writing as a visiting author.

To date, Bell has written twelve books, and has been an innovator in the literature for young adults in Canada. Many of his novels are widely used in high school course study, including two set in Orillia area -Five Days of the Ghost and Stones, one in Barrie -Death Wind, and one in Guelph -Zack. His work has been extensively published outside Canada, and has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese. Mr. Bell has won the Belgium Prize for Excellence, the Ruth Schwartz Award, and the Mr. Christie's Book Award. Bell is the proud father of Dylan, Megan, and Brendan, and the husband of author Ting-xing Ye.