About The Author

T. A. Keenleyside has had a varied career as a journalist, diplomat, academic and writer, and has travelled widely throughout Canada and abroad.  He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto where he studied Political Science and Economics. Subsequently, he worked as a staff writer at the Toronto Daily Star before choosing to do graduate studies at the University of London, England. After completing his Ph.D. in International Relations, he entered the Canadian diplomatic service in 1966. He was a political adviser on the Canadian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly (Fifth Committee) in 1967 and subsequently served abroad in Thailand (third secretary and vice-consul) and Indonesia (first secretary and consul). He resigned from the foreign service in 1971 to take up a teaching position in international relations and Canadian politics at the University of Windsor.

Keenleyside’s academic publications include over 40 journal articles and chapters in books, focusing in particular on issues pertaining to human rights, developmental assistance, and the media and foreign policy. In addition to his academic publications, he is the author of six books. The Common Touch, a novel about diplomacy and conflict in Southeast Asia (Doubleday, 1977), was short-listed for the award for the best first novel by a Canadian in its year of publication. Subsequently, he published three literary travel books with Penumbra Press: Missing the Bus, Making The Connection: Tales and Tastes of Travel (2008); Roaming The Big Land: Flavours of Canada (2010); and At The Table: Nourishing Conversation and Food (2012). The first two were winners of Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for English Canada in the food literature and culinary travel categories. In 2015, his second novel, In A Spin, was published by Borealis Press of Ottawa, and nominated for the Governor General’s award for English language fiction in 2016. His latest novel, All The Way (Borealis Press 2019), is an entertaining exploration of friendship and aging over a sixty-year period.

Keenleyside and his wife Dot, who contributed the recipes and some of the stories to the literary travel books, live in Toronto, although he remains Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor.