Nova Scotian author and teacher Gary R. Gray Jr. has been educating abroad for years.
His teacher at St. Francis Xavier University had suggested he go to a job fair in Ontario for some interview experience, but he wound up leaving the fair with a contract to Kuwait.
He travelled there with his now wife, whom he married four years after the journey, and ended up teaching in Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Gray says the choice to move back to Preston, N.S., was a personal one.
“Home has always been where my heart is, I think my family is obviously not getting any younger and my writing journey has kind of started to flourish a little bit, so I have books coming out up until around 2029, 2030,” he told CTV Your Morning Atlantic’s Crystal Garrett.
“It only makes sense if I’m writing stories about home that I’m also here to show up for the kids living in my community.”
Family is a main theme of his book “Spendin’ Time,” which he released this year and showcased at the Boston Book Festival last Saturday.
The book is described as a love letter to Black family life and the joy of generational bonds, following a young boy running errands in town with his grandfather. Gray says it’s based on times spent with his own grandfather who passed away.
“It’s about all the small moments that we tend to have and forget about, it’s about slowing down, listening to the voice, the laughter, the little things in life and trying to recognize that we don’t have to go fast when the world is telling us to. It’s a testament to slowing down,” he says.
His first book, “I’m From,” is inspired by growing up in Preston, Canada’s oldest Black community. It went on to become a Boston Globe-Horn book, which Gray says he didn’t expect.
He says the kids “enjoy hearing stories and listening to authors,” and highlights the importance of representation in their books.
The author himself says growing up it meant a lot to see authors that look like him, calling it a “game-changer.”
“[Kids] are captivated by, like, seeing themselves in the stories,” Gray explains. “Sometimes when they are making connections from like, what you’re reading, they’re picturing themselves with their grandparents, or riding the scooter, or going for the berry picking, or playing basketball. And that’s what stories are supposed to do.”
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