After over two decades in molecular genetics research, Beverly Akerman realized she'd been learning more and more about less and less. Skittish at the prospect of knowing everything about nothing, she turned, for solace, to writing. Her fiction collection, The Meaning of Children, was published in 2011 in Canada by Exile Editions; a Kindle version has just been self-published. In manuscript form, the book won the Writers' Federation of New Brunswck's David Adams Richards Prize and made the CBC – Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers’ Choice Contest Top 10 .

Her two monologues, "Pie" and "Chelle," the latter performed in Winnipeg at Sarasvati Productions' FemFest 2010, appear as short stories in her collection.

Other recent honours include: Finalist in Aesthetica Magazine's (UK) Creative Works Competition, PWAC’s 2011 Short Article Award, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and nonfiction. She has won or placed in many other competitions.

Credits include Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Montreal Gazette and CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, myriad literary and scientific journals, and other publications. She’s strangely pleased to believe she’s the only Canadian writer ever to have sequenced her own DNA.

Her TV and radio interviews are available at: http://bit.ly/nJpCHj; http://bit.ly/reqcN3; http://bit.ly/pOGFc9

Her recent Globe and Mail article "How to become an e-book sensation. Seriously" created a bit of a sensation of its own. Read it here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/how-to-become-an-e-book-s...

More on her website: http://beverlyakerman.blogspot.com/, on Facebook or Twitter (@Beverly_Akerman).

Reader and Reviewer Response to Beverly Akerman’s The Meaning Of Children:

A keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children aswell as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces that exist between the everyday events of life. A work with a brilliant sense of story…Magical, and so refreshing for me to read. I absolutely loved it and I hope it goes on to do
marvellous things. Yours is a luminous talent.~JoAnne Soper-Cook, Author and Judge, the WFNB's 2010 David Adams Richards Prize

Loved your book; read it in one sitting So each [story] is told either by a child, or it’s about a child. And it’s interesting because I think depending on the age of the person reading it, you relate to different ones. But especially to feminists, growing up with it, wrestling with our beliefs, and whether it worked out or not… a lot of women that you see in this book are trapped. We were trapped by what we were brought up to believe. And then we’re trapped by the marriages we find ourselves in, and the children we have… But on the other hand, each story ends with a certain resolve. There’s that sense of okay this is my situation But. And that’s what the meaning of children is. And yet, it’s about hope. It’s about the future…~Mutsumi Takahashi, Anchor, CTV News Montreal (interview)

A collection of 14 short stories which covers the range of experience from the point of view of children, mums, and also aging parents as well. It’s all there in this lovely little book, short stories about life in a family that might just resemble yours. I wanted to congratulate you on the publication of this book and I hope it goes far far afield for you. A wonderful gift for mother’s day, perhaps more long lived than the usual cut flowers.~Anne Lagacé Dowson, CJAD Radio journalist

Haunting and powerfully emotive, drawing on the subtleties of childhood, youth and parenthood that undermine us in strange and unexpected ways. Your writing is polished and mature, something I am always in awe of and why I got into publishing to begin with.~Meghan Macdonald, Transatlantic Literary Agency

This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination andwonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.~Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail

Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.~Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal
Gazette

Counter-intuitive to the title, for me these stories resonate with the sad truth of being a grownup. Life is that damn hard and just-under-the-surface tension saturates our existence. But the kids, they know what's going on. They may not understand all the details but they know the score. Akerman nails that sorrow, highlights it with unexpected humour, credits our resilience and almost never skips a beat.~Chris Benjamin, Author of Drive-by Saviours, on Goodreads

Akerman engages with dichotomies. Childhood is that safe,magical, carefree time and place — but it’s also risky, threatening, ominous, and dangerous — full of impenetrable mystery around things seen and experienced, but beyond understanding. And if it’s not too much of a simplification or stating the obvious, life and the world are not gentle on children simply for being children…If, as Dostoevsky once remarked, and as is quoted on the collection’s frontispiece, “The soul is healed by being with children,” it is the tragedy of adulthood that we become so isolated from childhood — and what children offer us. Artfully, evocatively, Beverly Akerman’s The Meaning of Children reminds us of that.~Darrell Squires, The Western Star

Beverly’s background as a scientist, MSc and twenty years as a molecular researcher, inevitably spills into the stories…characters, the settings and her style. Intelligent, objective, open-minded but not clinical, her prose is refreshing and unprejudiced. Her characters are frank and genuine...With The Meaning of Children, we get a beautifully written exposé on the meaning of life.~Francine Diot-Layton, The Rover

Just finished “Like Jeremy Irons.” That was a tough one. Saying I loved it feels contrary to the agony I'm feeling right now. (Perhaps I shouldn't have settled into it with a glass of wine?) Awesome writing - even if my uterus is cramping!~Lisa Dalrymple, Winner, TWUC’s 2011
Writing for Children Competition

Entering the world of The Meaning Of Children is like wrapping myself in the blanket my grandmother knit for me. I can feel every word, hear every sound, and be taken to a familiar place in my soul. You are a brilliant woman with a great spirit whose writing will resonate with many. Thank you.~Judith Litvack on Facebook