Brian is an award-winning and best-selling author of seven critically acclaimed narrative non-fiction books about the colourful personalities of Western Canada’s past. One of his titles, Romancing the Rockies, won him the inaugural Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award and a nomination for the Canadian Rockies Award. Another title, Scoundrels and Scallywags, topped the regional best-seller charts for more than 18 months and was short-listed for the prestigious Grant MacEwan Author’s Award. Brian’s latest title, Leaving Dublin: Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada, is a book of memoirs tracing his story from his upbringing in suburban Ireland to his life in Canada as a writer, broadcaster and musician. His other books include the first biography of renowned Canadian historian James H. Gray, and the first biography of the celebrated 19th century Irish folk poet Mary O’Leary, which was nominated for the Irish Times Literary Prize. A former staff writer with the Calgary Herald, Brian has written freelance articles and columns for magazines and newspapers across the United States and Canada, including the New York Times, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.