DONNA COSTA—novelist, poet, authorpreneur—is a former holistic health practitioner who integrates the world of natural health into her stories. Costa grew up on a farm in Perth County, southern Ontario, where she enjoyed the solitude of country living, filling her hours reading books under the back yard maple tree while trying to ignore her pesky brothers. Attending her rural elementary school, she received solid instruction in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, some of which she still remembers. Costa spent 20 years as a corporate secretary, ghostwriting countless business letters in which “Dear Sir” and “Yours truly” featured prominently. She penned “The Wellness Corner” column for an in-house corporate newsletter. After leaving the steno chair, she trained in Holistic Nutrition before graduating from the Toronto College of Homeopathic Medicine. She also trained as a practitioner of Bowenwork and Reconnective Healing. A stint teaching nutrition at the Toronto College of Homeopathy coincided with writing health blogs and guest contributions to Bowen Hands, The Journal of The Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia, and TheReconnection.com. She maintained a private holistic health practice until shifting to a career as a writer. At Sarah Selecky’s Writing School, Costa’s writing style was diagnosed as ‘Deeper Than You Think,’ a term Selecky defines as “deceptively straightforward and carefully crafted” yet “more philosophical than you let on.” Costa then studied memoir writing with Nicole Breit’s Spark Your Story. In 2020, Costa was awarded a Wild Writers Mentorship with longtime New Quarterly editor Susan Scott, followed by a 2022 online residency with Lorri Neilsen Glen at Sage Hill’s Summer Nonfiction program. The latter was supported by a CCA professional development grant. Costa’s short stories have been published in Prairie Fire, Queen’s Quarterly and Nurture Literary, shortlisted in Event’s 2022 NonFiction contest and gritLIT’s 2023 Writing Contest. Her poetry and short stories, selected by finalist judge Emma Donoghue, appear in Out of the Woods: Voices from the Forest City. Her books to date include YA fiction, memoir, travelogue, and rom-com, with historical fiction in the works. She writes from London, Ontario.