Meet the Staff

BIOS:

Born in the waning years of the baby boom, Peter Hunter grew up on a farm south of Ottawa. He fell into the world of bookselling in 1990 and now puts the skills acquired over the last decade to use packing returns and entering catalogues, along with other duties as assigned. Collected Works' resident expert on obscure Russian and South African fiction, Peter is also a raconteur of the world-famous Pantomimical Theological Debate joke and can highly recommend the cookies available at our coffee bar.

Alexandra McLeod has been working for COLLECTED WORKS since the spring of 1998, six months after emigrating from Germany where she taught English and Russian in highschools. Though she occasionally misses life in the old world she enjoys the Canadian way of life. Apart from selling books her other current jobs include being a mother ( of little Joschka ), teaching German and working behind the scenes for SALAMANDER Theatre for Young Audiences.

Craig Poile grew up in New Brunswick and now lives in Ottawa, where he is an active poet and playwright. He is part-owner of Collected Works.

Thirty-something Trish Slater has been a bookseller for the past seven years and is acting assistant manager at Collected Works. Her main passions are history, biography, philosophy and current events, but as she freely admits, "I'll read anything." She also writes, but has so far been unable to fully convince a publisher of the fact. At university she learned only fascinating and useless unformation, but her main claim is the bizarre and rare concept that she dislikes both chocolate and cheesecake.

Christopher Smith has been a bookseller since 1984 and opened Collected Works with Craig Poile in 1997. When he is not managing the store, ordering books or paying bills, Christopher can be found practicing the piano.