Diane Wishart is the author of The Rose That Grew From Concrete: Teaching and Learning with Disenfranchised Youth, published by the University of Alberta Press. Diane has many years of experience in the field of education, including work with Alberta Advanced Education, consulting with post-secondary institutions. Her past teaching and academic publishing includes high school literacy programs for youth, as well as teacher education at the University of Alberta.
Diane’s first novel, Smeg, was published by Rising Action Publishing in January 2026. Smeg was inspired by attendance at a creative writing workshop on villains, and their counterpart, detectives. Beginning in January 2021 Diane was inspired by the pandemic lockdown to enrol in a creative writing course on revising your novel, offered by the University of British Columbia. The content of this course guided the re-write of Smeg.
Diane has been a member of the Alberta Writer’s Guild writing critique group since 2011, and in July 2014 attended Sage Hill Writing Experience in Lumsden, Saskatchewan. Diane has attended a variety of writing workshops put on by the Canadian Authors Association, University of Alberta, and MacEwan University.