Katherine Monk assumed the name Katherine Monk when she moved from her hometown of Montreal to Vancouver in 1984 to escape the centralist Canadian conspiracy and to greet the great mountain called Whistler. She justified the latter by living at the University of British Columbia and buying books, staying up late and hanging around public spaces with a backpack. Life was good and so was the skiing.
 
Six years later, Monk had an honors degree in English, a post-grad diploma in film and monstrously developed quadriceps.
 
She found employment as a journalist.
 
It was no freakish accident. She spent many, many, many hours at the university newspaper (The Ubyssey) over her six year edu-vacation, finally falling off the barstool as city editor.
 
She regained consciousness at the city's broadsheet daily, The Vancouver Sun, in 1990 - after a few hallucinations at weeklies. But she has been dopey ever since and strangely, can't remember anything from her six-year, scholarship-laden, stint it the proud halls of academe.
 
Monk is also prone to episodes. They occur regularly and, usually, involve learning another language. From the moist tip of South America to the Austrian Alps, Monk has lost her wallet almost everywhere in the world. Fortunately, in return, she has gained many tongues (now packing a fat five into that l'il piehole) - starting each time with the surefire cultural immersion method that begins: "Thank you, but I have no money."
 
At several points, she's left the drunken and inky for the drunken and kinky, but low-budget film-making continues to be a hobby. Her real jobs have included ice cream dipper, commercial window washer, janitor, warehouse clerk, data entry, ski-suit packer, medical library assistant, toilet cleaner and - her personal demon - wedding photographer. “I mean, really,” says Monk, getting all flustered. “Who needs pictures of  a wedding? I hate to say it, but through a lens, all brides and grooms look alike: Panicked.” Monk abandoned her dream of becoming the next Annie Liebovitz when she realized this wasn’t a good approach with paying customers.
 
She focused her energy on developing a career where honesty and a burning desire to unveil hidden truths would be rewarded. Sadly, she didn’t land a job with Mike Holmes’s Make It Right productions. She got a job at the local metro daily: The Vancouver Sun (est. daily circulation 200,000).
 
Monk started at the Sun as a nightside reporter in 1990, and eventually worked in almost every department in the newsroom, from city reporter to editorial page editor, rock critic to movie writer, videogame and new media reviewer to columnist.
 
Simultaneous adventures at this time included reviewing movies for CBC radio's Definitely Not the Opera, reviewing videos for WTN's Creators, reviewing video game software for the NHL Players  Magazine, script-editing movies that never got made and teaching the fine art of drinking import beer after a tres way day going down (with one board or two - don't matter) those divine mountains.
 
In the year 2001, Monk’s first book, Weird Sex & Snowshoes -- and Other Canadian Film Phenomena was published by Raincoast Books (the Canadian home of Harry Potter). The book climbed all the way to #9 on the Canadian bestseller list -- which may not be all that impressive, until you consider most Canadian movies make less money than the cover price of the book itself.
 
Monk left the Vancouver Sun in 2002 to become a national writer with the then-nascent Canadian News Desk, the former Southam News Bureau which had been restructured to become a multi-media content feed for the Canwest News organization, the largest media conglomerate in Canada and owner of Canwest Newspapers (The Vancouver Sun, Province, Montreal Gazette, National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Saskatchewan Leader-Post and others...) and Global Television.
 
As national movie writer, Monk’s movie reviews now reached a national audience. She also started working on Global BC -- the undisputed market leader (see the latest BBM for BC at www.bbm.ca). If you’d like to see Monk blab on camera, you can download her Global podcast at iTunes.
 
Monk can also be heart weekly on Calgary’s talk-radio leader, CHQR, for Monk on Movies with host Mike Blanchard -- the number one show in its time slot.
 
In 2004, Omni Film adapted Weird Sex & Snowshoes to the screen under the direction of Jill Sharpe. The movie version of the book features an all-star cast of Canadian talents including Atom Egoyan, Anne Wheeler, Don McKellar and Michel Brault. You can see clips of WS&S at the Omni website: http://www.omnifilm.com/docs.shtml.
 
Though Monk has mellowed over the years -- she took up golf! -- she still gets a thrill schussing down the hill, and is very grateful to the mountain goddess that a few serious injuries (including a broken back) haven’t slowed her down too much. When she isn’t sitting at her desk or slouching in a theatre, Monk teaches film studies (recent stints have included work at Simon Fraser University and Capilano University), lectures (recent lecture destinations include The University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the University of British Columbia  and McGill University’s Centre for Canadian Studies).
 
Monk does belong to some real organizations, however, and she takes great pride in listing them to whoever will listen: The Broadcast Film Critics’ Association, The Alliance of Women Film Journalists, The Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle, The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, The Writer’s Union of Canada and The AV Preservation Trust.
 
Her profoundly trivial knowledge of show business is showcased in the new show Six Degrees of TV from Force Four Entertainment, airing 2010-2011 on TVtropolis. Monk is one of three on-air entertainment experts who links celebrities through surprising plot twists.
 
When Monk isn’t busy updating this page with boring details about herself, she likes to say she “has a life...”  And those of us who know her like to nod politely when she says this, and quickly change the topic.
 
Thank you for taking the time to read Katherine Monk’s internet biography.