Dawn Green graduated from the University of Victoria with degrees in languages and education. She is a high school Spanish and English teacher, basketball coach, and volunteers with Special Olympics BC.

When Kacey Left (Red Deer, 2015) was Green's first young adult novel. It is the tale about a teenager, Sara, coping with the suicide of her best friend Kacey. The two had been best friends since grade three. Kids at school stare at Sara and whisper behind her back. The "Obnoxious Counsellor" that her parents force her to meet with thinks writing letters to Kacey in a journal will help Sara deal with her grief. All the adults keep telling her that her life needs to get back to normal -- but how can anything ever be normal again?

Green won the $5,000 Bolen Books Children's Book Prize for her second YA novel In the Swish (Red Deer Press, 2015). This coming-of-age story is about Bennett Ryan, a talented basketball player who propels her team to a regional championship. Then, in her last year at high school, she has to switch schools and her world suddenly becomes much more complex. She has to make friends with the team she helped defeat the year before; a new friend is on the autism spectrum; and many of her new teammates are from different cultures. To top it off, Ryan has to face her old team and is confronted with many old assumptions.

Samantha Smart is living the life of your average teen, even captain of her high school soccer team, when a close election leaves her country teetering into totalitarianism. Samantha is thrust into the fight to save democracy in How Samantha Smart Became a Revolutionary (Red Deer Press $14.95) in  Dawn Green's third YA novel.

BOOKS:

How Samantha Smart Became a Revolutionary (Red Deer Press, 2017) $14.95

In the Swish (Red Deer Press, 2015) $12.95 9780889955394

When Kacey Left (Red Deer Press, 2015) $12.95 978-0889955233

[BCBW 2016]