Authors and freelancers Simonds and Grady found a way to write a book together

Well-known freelance journalists Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds are taking part in the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, talking about writing a book together about their journey through the United States. The couple had fine-tuned the book last year at Whistler as Writers in Residence. 

The book is called Breakfast at the Exit Café: Travels through America (Greystone) and it based upon taking the "long way home" from Vancouver by car to their home in Athens, Ontario (north of Kingston) in 2006, following the southern rim of the United States.  The couple hadn't intended to write together or to write a book about the trip, but nevertheless it happened, despite Simonds' "methodical style" and Grady's "off-the-cuff, fervent approach". 

Simonds has been a freelance magazine writer as well as a published author; her magazine work includes articles for Harrowsmith, Equinox, Canadian Geographic and the Saturday Night.  She worked for several years as an editor at Harrowsmith and a columnist on energy, environment and housing. 

Wayne Grady is the former editor of Harrowsmith and, in addition to being an author of many books has made a name as a translator, having won the Governor-General's Award for translation in 1989 for his translation of  On the Eighth Day by Antonine Maillet. He was at one time the science editor of Equinox magazine, which in 2000 was merged into Canadian Geographic.