<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Amanda was born in the UK grew up in Canada and lived in various cities across North America and the UK.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>She earned a BA from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia an MA in Creative Writing from Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas and attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa on multiple occasions.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the 1970s '80s and '90s Amanda wrote for newspapers and magazines across Canada and the US. Her bylines appeared on stories covering sports business politics race relations and a wide range of other topics.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Her fiction-sketches short stories and a partial novel-features unforgettable characters and vivid depictions of events and situations all seen through the eyes of a keen observer.</span></p>