About the Author

A two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, Terry Fallis is the award-winning author of nine national bestsellers, including his most recent, A New Season (2023), all published by McClelland & Stewart (M&S). He is currently working on his tenth novel, likely to be released in August 2025.

His debut novel, The Best Laid Plans (2008), won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was crowned the 2011 winner of CBC Canada Reads as the “essential Canadian novel of the decade.“ In January 2014, CBC aired a six-part television miniseries based on The Best Laid Plans earning very positive reviews. In September 2015, it debuted as a stage musical in Vancouver, produced by Touchstone Theatre and Patrick Street Productions. The High Road (2010) was published in September 2010 and was a finalist for the 2011 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Terry’s third novel, Up and Down (2012), was released in September 2012. It debuted on the Globe and Mail bestsellers list, was a finalist for the 2013 Leacock Medal, and won the 2013 Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award. Terry’s fourth novel, No Relation (2014), hit bookstores in May 2014, opened on the Globe and Mail bestsellers list, and won the 2015 Leacock Medal. M&S published Terry’s fifth novel, Poles Apart (2015), in October 2015, opening on several bestsellers lists including the Globe and Mail’s. It was a finalist for the 2016 Leacock Medal. One Brother Shy (2017) was published in May 2017 and was an instant bestseller. Three days after his seventh novel, Albatross (2019), was published, it broke onto the Globe and Mail bestsellers list. His eighth novel, Operation Angus (2021), was also an instant bestseller and a CBC Best Books of 2021 selection, while his ninth, A New Season (2023), was a #1 national bestseller.

In June, 2013, the Canadian Booksellers Association presented Terry with the Libris Award for Author of the Year.

Terry has written for many publications including Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star.

Terry Fallis earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree from McMaster University (1983) where he became engulfed in university politics and somehow persuaded the undergraduates to elect him President of the Students Union.

After graduation, he turned his back on engineering and joined future Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s full time staff for the 1984 federal Liberal Leadership campaign.

He served on the political staff of the Liberal Minister of State for Youth, the Honourable Jean Lapierre, in the short-lived cabinet of Prime Minister John Turner. He stayed with Lapierre as his Legislative Assistant in opposition (1984-85) following the landslide victory of Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservative Party.

Terry returned to Toronto in 1985 as Legislative Assistant to the Honourable Robert Nixon, Treasurer (now called Finance Minister) in the newly-elected Liberal Ontario government led by Premier David Peterson.

For nearly eight years (1988-95) after leaving politics, he was a government affairs and communications consultant with the international PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, including stints as Vice President running the Ontario government affairs group and finally President of Berger & Associates, a Hill and Knowlton subsidiary.

In 1995, he co-founded Thornley Fallis with Joe Thornley, a full service communications consulting agency with offices in Ottawa and Toronto. Terry also created and co-hosted more than 200 episodes of the popular business podcast, Inside PR. Though the agency he cofounded lives on, Terry retired in 2022 to write full-time.

A homebuilt hovercraft plays a supporting role in The Best Laid Plans and also makes appearances in The High Road and Operation Angus. Terry has always had a thing for hovercrafts. Here’s the one Terry and a classmate designed and built in 1975, when they were 15 years old and not yet old enough to drive a car. Apparently, Terry was old enough to drive a hovercraft around the parking lot of the Ontario Science Centre.

Terry lives and writes in Toronto and can be reached at tfallis@gmail.com.