Shandi Mitchell

Shandi Mitchell is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter. She spent her childhood on a military base on the prairies and now makes her home in Nova Scotia with her husband, Alan, and their dog, Annie. Under This Unbroken Sky is her first novel.

Biography

Shandi Mitchell is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter. Her short films have screened at numerous international festivals, and she is a recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts endowment. Mitchell spent her childhood on a military base on the prairies and now makes her home in Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada, with her husband, Alan, and their dog, Annie. Under This Unbroken Sky is her first novel.

Good To Know

""I cannot sing or play an instrument. My husband is a wonderful songwriter/ guitarist and assured me that he could teach me. Everyone has a musical voice. It just needs to be found. After 14 years and numerous attempts at voice (the dog whines and runs away), guitar (why are your fingers bent that way?), percussion (he took away the shaker egg), harmonica (he put in ear plugs), drumming- (1-2-3-4 can't you hear that?) -- he has finally admitted defeat.""

""My Ukrainian blood is ashamed to admit that I can't grow a vegetable garden. I have planted one for the last ten years and harvest maybe three tomatoes and a dozen pea pods each season. I neglect to weed, water and feed. My idea of gardening is survival of the fittest. I have great, untamed perennial gardens that fight for their lives every year. The same theory applies to my houseplants. I experience great guilt if a plant succumbs. I can't rip it out, but I don't help it, either. That would prolong its suffering. I keep moving it from room to room, inching it closer to the door until it lands outside on the deck and my husband carries it to the compost bin. I do not watch.""

""When I am writing, my subconscious continues to work while I sleep. I often dream about a scene that is still not quite right. It plays like a movie. I can stop it, start again, revise, and then re-play it. I often wake up with a key element revealed. Sometimes the real and dreamed blur. I have been known to wake up mad at my husband for an indiscretion committed only in the dream world. I have fought of assailants with martial arts moves (dangerous for my sleeping partner). I have died in my dreams and kept on dreaming.""