Biography
Shannon Hunt grew up on a small sailboat in the Caribbean, a circumstance she blames for her aversion to all exercise except swimming and her ability to tell her stern from her bow – admittedly, not a particularly useful life skill. After an unusually long (ten-year) stopover in Florida, her parents packed up and moved home to Canada, settling on a small island in British Columbia. While taking a water taxi to high school every day was cool, making new friends in grade 12 was not, so she spent lots of time by herself writing stories and articles, some of which were published in the local newspaper.#After graduation, Shannon moved to a larger island (the 43rd largest in the world to be exact) and worked her way through bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Victoria, pausing for an eight-month long stint in Barcelona where she practiced her Spanish, wrote more stories and ate lots of paella.#After university, Shannon was roped into starting up a kids’ science magazine, YES Mag, by a computer engineering grad who dreamed of making science and engineering interesting and entertaining. Over the course of fifteen years, they started a second magazine, KNOW, and won awards, including the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from the University of Victoria, the Eve Savory Award for Science Communication from the BC Innovation Council, the Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Periodical of the Year from the Association of Educational Publishers.#Shannon is a co-editor of the non-fiction titles The Amazing International Space Station, Fantastic Feats and Failures, Science Detectives, Hoaxed!, and Robots, and the author of the fiction title Peril on Pender.#She lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her husband, two awesome kids and a crazy labradoodle – who all engineer equal parts magic and mayhem into her life.
Awards
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Engineered!
2020 - Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List, Texas Library Association, Commended
2019 - Silver Birch Nonfiction Award, Ontario Library Association, Short-listed
2018 - Best Books for Kids & Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre, Winner
2018 - Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award, California Reading Association, Short-listed
2017 - Eureka! Honor Award, , Winner
Non-fiction
Engineered!, 2017