Kate Scarth

So it felt, it really felt like a different world to me.

I am a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.

And as the chair of Ella Montgomery Studies, I work closely with the Ella Montgomery Institute.

And we kind of have two main goals.

One is to support research into Montgomery's life, work, legacy, context.

And we do that through a journal of Ella Montgomery Studies, which is online, and then a conference every two years.

And one thing that's really exciting about the work with the Montgomery Institute is how international it is.

So we usually have about 15 different countries represented in the presenters at the conference.

And we're very focused on public engagement as well.

So whether that's like locally with the National Park, where there's the Green Gables House that you can visit, or with some of the international scholars or tourism operators or just any of the many people who have an interest in Montgomery.

Yeah, so I've always been a really big reader and I definitely return to Montgomery's books.

I mean, one of the things that's been really exciting for me about the role is just learning about what an artist Montgomery was.

So she kept scrapbooks, she was a photographer, she kept journals for decades.

So there's a lot to read that either she produced or has been written about her.

I've gotten really interested in books that are adaptations of her work or homages in some way to her writing and even to books that just reference Anna Green Gables once.

I'm really interested in kind of the cultural shorthand that that novel represents.

So certainly some of my reading is Montgomery focused.

I've never been a collector, but I think for the first time in my life, I am going to start collecting books.

that, you know, have some link to Montgomery.

And there's a local kids bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia called Woozles.