CITY/TOWN: Lantzville, B.C.

DATE OF BIRTH: January 5 1938

PLACE OF BIRTH: East Fremantle, Western Australia

ARRIVAL IN CANADA: 1962

ARRIVAL IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: 1963

ANCESTRAL BACKGROUND: Australian

EMPLOYMENT OTHER THAN WRITING: Teacher for 12 years in Australia, England, Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria; have been a freelance writer, photographer, guest lecturer and travel consultant since 1972

AWARDS: Northwest Outdoor Writers Association Writing Awards, Outdoor Writers of Canada Writing and Photography Awards, Francis H. Kortright Conservation Award for Excellence in Outdoor Writing, American Express Travel Writing Award for Excellence in Travel Writing, SFU Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award

BOOKS:

There's a Seal in my Sleeping Bag, William Collins/Alfred Knopf, 1972. Updated, republished, HarperCollins, 2000
Pacific Wilderness (with David Hancock), Hancock House, 1974. Previously titled Wild Islands.
The Mighty Mackenzie, Hancock House, 1974
There's a Raccoon in my Parka, Doubleday, 1977
Love Affair with a Cougar, Doubleday, 1978
Vanderhoof, the Town that Wouldn't Wait, Nechako Valley Historical Society, 1979
An Ape Came out of my Hatbox, McClelland and Stewart, 1979
Gypsy in the Classroom, Everest House 1980
Tell Me, Grandmother, McClelland and Stewart, 1985
Northwest Territories: Canada's Last Frontier, Autumn Images 1986;
Looking for the Wild, Doubleday 1986
Alaska Highway: Road to Adventure, Autumn Images, 1988
Northwest Territories, Grolier, 1993/1997
Nunavut, Lerner Publications, 1995
Yukon, Lerner Publications, 1996
Winging it in the North, Oolichan Books, 1996
Destination Vancouver, Lerner Publications, 1998
Western Canada Travel Smart, Avalon Travel, 2001
Readers Digest Complete Road Atlas of Canada (Western Canada text), The Readers Digest, 2002
Tabasco the Saucy Raccoon, Sono Nis Press, 2006
The Ring [based on Tell Me, Grandmother, McClelland and Stewart, 1985] The Ring: Memories of a Metis Grandmother, the pioneer love story of Sam and Livingston and Jane Howse, (Lyn Hancock Books print version 2010 and Kindle e-book in 2012)

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS: Animal caretaker, photographer, filmmaker and explorer Beryl Lyn Hancock has hitchhiked through Africa, taught school in Australia, England and Canada, got several degrees in English, education, communications, speech and drama, then spent a decade raising seals, raccoons, cougars, bears, apes and other creatures. These experiences resulted in a series of effusive, cutesy titles that sold well. For the past three decades, she's wandered with her camera, notebook and backpack through British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. She arrived in Canada in Montreal in 1961. She first came to Vancouver in 1963. Her Masters thesis in Communications in 1981 was about changing attitudes towards cougars. During her writing career she has contributed to numerous books including Great Canadian Hunting Stories published by DesPub, Allanburg, Ontario; More Great Canadian Fishing Stories that Didn't Get Away (anthology), DesPub, 2001; The 1998 Nunavut Handbook (two selections), Nortext Multimedia, 1998; Great Canadian Fishing Stories That Didn't Get Away (3 stories), General Store Publishing House, 1996; Cycles 2 (one chapter), Prentice Hall Canada, 1990; Viewpoints (one chapter), Nelson Canada, 1989; Our Wildlife Heritage (one chapter)Centennial Wildlife Society of BC, 1987; People in Perspective (one chapter), Prentice-Hall, 1979; Hiyou-Waw-waw, (one chapter), CommCept, 1978; Recollections of the Works Department (one chapter), Thomas Nelson, 1975. She has also published photos in various books. In 2015, she reported that Jimmy Fallon's NBC Tonight Show featured a couple of her books, Love Affair with a Cougar and There's a Raccoon in my Parka. "Jimmy asked his audience who was the cougar, the animal or the woman," she wrote. At the time Hancock was writing a memoir comparing her three trips hitchhiking through 18 countries in Africa and the Middle East: 1960, 2012-13, and 2015, and then in November 2015 to January 2016, visiting some countries she had never heard of.

[BCBW 2015] "Outdoors"