Jan DeGrass

Works by Jan DeGrass:

• Winter of Siege
• Jazz With Ella
• The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver's Search for Food Alternatives
• Safe Haven: 50 Years of Service 1940-1990, Gulf & Fraser Fishermen's Credit Union

Jan DeGrass writes in Sechelt, BC, where she is the former Arts and Entertainment columnist for the Coast Reporter newspaper and is currently the editor of Coast Life magazine. She has led writing critique groups and assisted other authors with editing their manuscripts. Her award-winning article, Loving in Leningrad, based on a true experience in the Soviet Union, drew on her background in Russian language and literature and became the genesis of her novel, Jazz with Ella. Her latest book, a historical novel, Winter of Siege, is set in 1941 in St. Petersburg. Anna Borisovna Leonova's life in Leningrad is shattered: her mother is accused of treason and her father hastily evacuates her from the city before the German enemy surrounds it. With the help of a cheeky boy, a handsome truck driver and her own persistence, she returns over the ice road of Lake Ladoga to search for her mother in the besieged city that has no heat, no light, no food, little water and where citizens are dying of starvation.

Luckily, she has a plan. Jan Degrass participated in the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society's Art & Words Festival in 2022, 2023, and 2024. She is on the Board of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society.