Lucia Mann is a self-described former "slave" and a former British journalist who founded the North American Modern-Day Slavery Reporting Center. She came to Canada in 1992 to aid the Manitoba government with environmental issues and moved to BC a year later. She became a Canadian citizen in 2000. Born in the wake of World War II in what was then the British colony (Commonwealth) of South Africa, she is of Sicilian and British descent. For five decades she has fought for change to combat "the heinous trade in human flesh." Her novels in the four-book African Freedom Series are inspired by real events.

Based on a true story, her Addicted to Hate relates how parents can often be abused mentally, physically and financially by adult children. In doing so, Mann contemplates the question of nature vs. nurture.

The Little Breadwinner: War and Survival in the Salvadoran Heartland (Aperion 2020) tells the stories of people who lived through El Salvador's brutal civil war, 1980 - 1992, which claimed the lives of more than 75,000 Salvadorans. The families tyrannized by the country's military-led government came mostly from poor peasants, indigenous peoples, and child farm workers. Lucia Mann, who was in El Salvador at the time, recalls the human rights violations during and after the "dirty" war between the American CIA-backed government and the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. Throughout it all, many of the characters Mann describes yearn for peace, justice and normalcy. The Little Breadwinner is Lucia Mann's seventh book that exposes accounts of both personal and social injustice.

In Weeping Goes Unheard: Sacred Tears for Indigenous Victims of Racial Genocide (Aperion, 2021) Mann provides an historical record for those unfamiliar with Canada's shameful history in its treatment of Indigenous people. These accounts demonstrate that there can be no peace and harmony unless there's equal justice for all.

Mann's 9th title, Hidden Behind the Mist of Arrow Lakes (Aperion, 2023) is a novel based on real events about individuals with ties to the Nazi era—some born during the war and others after—who adopted new identities in a remote part of BC, cleverly altering one or two letters of their birth or last names. Living inconspicuously, they managed to stay beneath the radar. Mann's new tale weaves together the intricate web of connections between Russia, England, Germany and Canada that illustrates links to the Holocaust’s history. Within its pages lies a harrowing chronicle of unspeakable atrocities that managed to remain shrouded in secrecy until outed by a courageous woman.

BOOKS:

Hidden Behind the Mist of Arrow Lakes: So deep are the sinister secrets that hide in plain sight (Aperion, 2023) $19.95 978-0-9856039-7-7
Weeping Goes Unheard: Sacred Tears for Indigenous Victims of Racial Genocide (Aperion, 2021) $17.95 9780985603946
The Little Breadwinner: War and Survival in the Salvadoran Heartland (Aperion 2020) $17.95 9780985603939
Endless Incarnation Sorrows (Grassroots 2019)
Addicted to Hate (Grassroots 2018) 978-0-9794805-9-1
The Sicilian Veil of Shame (Grassroots 2016)
Rented Silence (Grassroots Publishing Group 2016)
A Veil of Blood Hangs over Africa (Grassroots 2015)
Africa's Unfinished Symphony (Grassroots 2013)

[BCBW 2021]