Betty Jane Wylie is a distinguished non-fiction author and playwright, whose work also includes poetry and librettos. With over thirty-five books and three dozen plays to her credit – published by a wide range of presses – she has written bestsellers, memoirs, self-help studies, 'belles lettres' accounts of women diarists and of her own Icelandic background, a book about financial planning, and even several cookbooks. She received an Order of Canada in 2003 and has been a writer-in-residence at libraries across the country, Chair of the Canadian Writers Union, and a Fellow of The Bunting Institute at Radcliffe Harvard. She is a graduate of the University of Manitoba, which granted her an honorary doctorate and collects her literary papers. She is very old.