Frank Veszely

Born in Kispest, a suburb of Budapest in 1936, the author prepared himself in his youth to become "his nation's next great poet," but found himself without a country and without a language following his participation in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Coming to Canada in 1957, he abandoned poetry for a long while, becoming an English-speaking Canadian and a career school teacher. Educated at UBC, he came to Kamloops in 1969, where he still resides. Married a Canadian born woman of Croatian descent, Mary Majnarich in 1965, they had a daughter, Laurel, born in 1970. Retired in 1996, he was diagnosed with heart disease. Undaunted, he returned to university and obtained a B. A. in English Literature. The life-long hiatus was over, and for the next 25 years he devoted his life to realizing the ambition of his youth, writing in both Hungarian and English.