Michelle Grierson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Michelle Grierson is a literary fiction author that is best known for her debut novel “Becoming Leidah.” While she is best known for her writing, she spent nearly three decades in special education and mainstream classroom teaching.

Writing is something that she has always been doing. However, when she was younger she did not know what she wanted to do as she went from psychiatrist to ballerina to author, depending on what time or day it was.

She still remembers how she used to turn on music and put on dance attire on her parents’ record player. She would usually dance to the tunes of David Bowie and Tchaikovsky whenever she was alone at home.

During such times, she used to dance which gave her inspiration for ideas that she would put down in a journal.

When she went to high school she got interested in creative fiction writing and she decided that she wanted to pursue a career in authorship.

Nonetheless, she still continued to paint and dance, and hence when it came to time for college applications, her school choices reflected this.

She applied for Dance at York, Journalism at Carleton, and visual art at Guelph. Since she got a Guelph scholarship she decided to pursue visual art.

Courtesy of her father, Michelle Grierson has Norwegian heritage as her family moved to South Dakota from Europe in the 1800s.

Her father then migrated to Ontario, which is where he met her mother whose family is from the British Isles. Her parents briefly lived in Windsor before they settled in Orangeville.

Unlike Michelle, none of her parents were artistic or had any interest in the creative arts. However, she believes that everyone has some artistic streak and that her parents just never found their creative talent.

Much of the time, her parents were involved in mundane everyday activities which makes her the oddball in her family. Grierson still remembers how she used to prance around her house as a child.

She used to carry a sketchbook from room to room as she imagined fantasy worlds. Grierson also used to illustrate the many scenes from the Grimms’ folktales that her mother used to read to her almost every day.

Her desire to make her own stories permeated her very being and even simple activities such as taking a bath were a source of inspiration for her imagination.

When Michele Grierson went to college, she undertook studies in visual arts and English literature. During this time, she penned a lot of short stories, essays, and poems that posited water as some form of the sacred feminine.

One of these was a piece that found inspiration from Marty Pratt’s brilliant impression of filleted salmon. Grier wrote a poem interpreting the pink fish flesh as a metaphor for how marriage can result in the subjugation of women in modern society.

She planned on publishing an anthology in her late twenties but life had something to say about that. When she started a family and become a mother everything went haywire.

It was a very huge challenge even just getting a few minutes to write. As a teacher and mother, she had very little time but she was determined to become a published author.

As such, even though she was strapped for time, she did not wait for life to get out of the way but made time for her writing.

The insistence of her titular character who kept whispering her story inside her head finally got her writing.

However, while the character came to her while she was in her twenties, it was not until she was in her forties in late 2014 that she got serious with writing.

This is when she poured out all the landscape, mythology, and character out in the earnest and lucid style that resulted in one of the most popular debuts.

By the time 2016 came around, Michele Grierson found herself with a very huge manuscript. A friend urged her to join Humber College’s online fiction writing program and she did.

As such, she spent much of the free time she had between parenting and teaching revising her draft alongside editors, professors, and other aspiring authors.

In 2018, she submitted a toned-down manuscript to the Festival of Literary Diversity in Brampton. Upon winning, she finally had the opportunity to make her pitch to a Simon & Schuster editor.

Even though she had come a long way in editing, assembling, and trying to publish her debut, she did not know what a pitch was and had to use Google.

She believes her belief in providential powers and fate is what finally made her a successful author. Michelle published “Becoming Leidah” in 2021.

“Becoming Leidah” by Michelle Grierson is set in the Norwegian hinterlands, where the blue-skinned and web-footed Leidah was born to Maeva.

With every passing season, her mother is worried that she is becoming even more peculiar. Inside the small child, a strange power is taking control and making her behave in bizarre ways.

Maeva does her best to hide the kid from the people in town who have been whispering about the peculiar child. She hides the child even as she is also hiding her magical ancestry from her daughter.

On his part Pieter her husband desires nothing more than acceptance in his society. However, Maeva is not as naive as her husband and knows the neighbors who claim to be adherents of a new faith will pounce and punish any transgression.

Following both daughter and mother through time, a curious shapeshifter is waiting for the Fates to do their thing and for Maeva to finally reclaim her real identity.

Meanwhile, Maeva’s elusive past is beckoning and she soon acknowledges that she will have to help her daughter navigate her birthright and survive in a harsh world.

However, Pieter’s naive love is threatening the secure life that the family has painstakingly built. Maeva may have to protect herself and her daughter from Pieter.