P.E.I. author launches her new memoir

With 45 years of continuous writing behind her, P.E.I. journalist, author, photographer and award-winning poet Kathy Birt has done it again.

Her latest book, Second Glimpses, which is her 15th, offers more poignant stories of her years growing up in Covehead Road. Readers will find humour, chance meetings, the pristine and ugly side of moving to the city and much more.

The launch for Second Glimpses will be held at the Haviland Club in Charlottetown Dec. 3, 1-4 p.m. The author’s first memoir, Just a Glimpse, as well as others she has written will be available for sale.

While the author felt she had completed the book by June 2020, more stories came about and were added to the manuscript. An addition to this book that is not in Just a Glimpse are snippets of the author’s life in pictures in the back pages.

Always a constant at the annual New Year’s levee’s, Birt included pictures of her with some of the Island’s premiers, as well as some family photos, pictures with friends and even a picture of her with one of her Covehead Road school teachers.

“Choosing the pictures from 26 photo albums was not easy,” she said. “I changed my mind many times and had to just say to myself, ‘OK, enough. Just do it.’”

With permission from her eldest son, Jeff Jorgensen, she included a couple of stories focusing on him, as he celebrated Bluefield High School winter carnival and a story where he was left behind while attending Grade 1 in the old Parkdale School on Linden Avenue in 1973. There is also a story of the author’s school girl crush and a hidden family secret that culminated with getting to know her brother, James, in 2017.