Creative Couples: Merilyn Simonds And Wayne Grady, A Life Filled With Love Of Writing And Each Other

By Judith Jenya

For many writers, the life of letters can be solitary. But for one Canadian couple, writing has been a shared journey—sometimes collaborative, sometimes parallel, but always deeply intertwined. Merilyn grew up in Ontario, Canada, near Stratford. When she was seven, her family moved to Brazil. The experience left a lasting mark. “It gave me a taste for the fabulous,” she recalls.

Her writing life began early. A diary given to her at age seven eventually evolved into journals filled with observations, character sketches, and story fragments. By high school she was writing a column for a local newspaper and was encouraged to pursue journalism. “I remember thinking, this is not for me, I want to make things up.” She left journalism for studies in English literature and drama, married young, and raised two sons. Writing returned later through an unexpected path: soap. When her youngest child developed severe allergies, Merilyn began making soap at home. An article she wrote about the process was published in the Canadian magazine Harrowsmith, which focused on back-to-the-land living. Soon afterward, a publisher asked her to expand the piece into a book.

That book, The Art of Soap Making, launched a series of unusual how-to titles. Whether writing about canoe building, gardening, or solar projects, she focused less on technique and more on the people behind the craft. “It’s always the stories of people that interest me,” she says.

Her breakthrough came after she moved to Kingston, Ontario. Exploring the attic of a rented house, she discovered antique cookie tins filled with old letters. The correspondence turned out to be between a prisoner in Kingston Penitentiary and a young woman who lived nearby during the early 20^th century. The discovery became her bestselling book The Convict Lover, which is still in print after 30 years, and appeared the same year as “Alias Grace” by Margaret Atwood, which was also set in the Kingston Penitentiary. The coincidence led to shared festival appearances and a lasting friendship.

Around that time, Merilyn also met Wayne. Wayne’s path to writing began in Windsor, Ontario, just across the Detroit River from the United States. His father joined the Royal Canadian Air Force when Wayne was eight, and the family moved frequently, living on military bases. After studying English literature at Carleton University, he entered journalism, starting as a copy editor for a national magazine. Over time he rose through editorial ranks and eventually joined Harrowsmith as managing editor.

Though journalism defined his early career, books soon followed. One of his first major projects involved traveling with paleontologists to China’s Gobi Desert to document a dinosaur-hunting expedition. “I like using the journey as the skeleton of a book,” he explains. “You travel with scientists and write about what they’re discovering.”

Another adventure took him aboard an icebreaker headed toward the Arctic with climate researchers. The resulting book, The Quiet Limit of the World, explored global warming long before climate change became a widely discussed issue. A more personal project emerged years later during research in Windsor. Searching old census records, Wayne discovered something unexpected: his father’s family was not Irish, as he had been told, but African American. His father, light-skinned enough to pass as white, had concealed that heritage for his entire life.

“I didn’t learn any of this until I was in my late forties,” Wayne says. After years trying to write the story as nonfiction, he realized too many gaps existed in the historical record. Encouraged by Merilyn, he reimagined it as fiction. The result was the novel Emancipation Day, followed by a prequel, Up from Freedom.

Merilyn mentors selected authors, appears at many festivals, and was the founder of the Kingston Writersfest. They have both taught at University writing programs. Despite sharing a profession, their creative processes differ. Wayne writes quickly and likes to share drafts almost immediately. Merilyn writes slowly and meticulously, often producing fifteen drafts before showing anyone her work.

Their compromise: written critiques only, delivered later and never face-to-face. They collaborated on just one book, a travel memoir inspired by a cross-country journey through the United States, “Breakfast at the Exit Café”. Yet their influence on each other runs deeper than any single project. Wayne says he always writes with one ideal reader in mind: Merilyn. For Merilyn, the influence is quieter but equally powerful. “I didn’t grow up around writers,” she says. “Wayne made the writing life seem possible.” Today the couple divides their time between Canada and San Miguel de Allende, where the color, culture, and slower pace encourage creativity. “México is right-brain,” Wayne says with a smile. “Canada is left-brain.”

In San Miguel, their daily routine is simple: write all morning, break for lunch and cards, then return to editing or new pages in the afternoon. After more than forty years in the literary world, both remain driven by the same curiosity that started it all.

“The wonderful thing about writing,” Merilyn says, “is that every book takes you back to kindergarten. You start again not knowing anything—and that’s the best part.