Living 'off-line' in Vancouver, Cairo-born Raffi Cavoukian has reportedly sold more than two million copies of his seven songbooks and 13 picture books.
With a newly published autobiography, The Life of a Children's Troubador (Homeland $33.95), the effervescent and articulate Raffi will host the 15th annual B.C. Book Prizes gala on April 24th.
Since he began performing for young children in 1974, Raffi has recorded 13 albums and received the Order of Canada. But his roots have always been literary as much as musical. In 1948 he was named Raffi after a famous Armenian author, one of his mother's favourite writers.
Raffi moved to Vancouver in 1990 and began his first adult book following the sudden death of his parents in 1995. "I felt a call to write my life story,"; he says, "which in many ways includes theirs."; Non-toxic in all its elements, the latest Raffi project is touted as a model of sustainable publishing. 1-896943-44-6

[BCBW WINTER 1998]