Born in Nelson, B.C., Diana Atkinson wrote her first novel Highways and Dancehalls (Random House, 1995) derived from her own experiences as a stripper. The story follows a girl of 17, a product of a broken marriage and preoccupied parents, who finds herself stripping in bars along the West Coast of Canada. The critically acclaimed novel mainly deals with healing from childhood pain rather than concentrating on sexuality. Atkinson left B.C. to attend school in Montreal following its publication, but returned to British Columbia in 2005 after living in the United States.

[BCBW 2005] "Fiction" "Health" "Dance"