HALLIE EPHRON: Where do you come from, and how much of that place still beckons? Whose genes did you inherit?
These are fundamental questions that we mystery writers ask of our characters, and often of ourselves.
We travel to the places where our mysteries take place, all in an effort to get the details right. But traveling to the places that shaped our own ancestors or our characters' pasts is a special challenge.
Introducing Kathy Chung who makes that challenge a lot easier and so much more fun.
For two decades Kathy has been conference coordinator for the annual Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's a fabulous several-day event (regularly featuring luminaries Diana Gabaldon, (until recently) Anne Perry and Donald Maas, just for example.)
Each year I so look forward to being welcomed to the conference by Kathy. She's lovely, competent, able to put out twelve competing fires at the same time.
What I didn't know is that Kathy is also a qualified genealogist specializing in Scotland, North America, and the rest of the United Kingdom. Today she's branching out, applying her organization and genealogical talents to a new venture that has me wishing I had ancestors from Scotland...
KATHY CHUNG: All the work I love best is some combination of puzzles, stories, and connection: researching and writing novels, genealogy, and planning conference and events to bring people together to learn, explore, and connect.
My own roots are Scottish, and I've been lucky enough to make several research trips to Scotland and to study family and local history at the University of Dundee. I've combined my love of bringing people together in a supportive environment to learn - and my years of experience planning the Surrey International Writers' Conference - with my love of genealogy and research in what to me is a dream job: offering supportive small-group research trips to Edinburgh.
At the end of 2025, I launched my new business, https://scottishgenealogy.ca, to offer small groups of amateur family historians from North America who have Scottish roots week-long research trips in Edinburgh. The first one is coming up in June.
The first trip is coming up June 13-20, 2026.
Explore your roots in the country of your ancestors or research your Scottish novel setting while getting a feel for the sights, sounds, and culture of Scotland. Connect with other people who love disappearing down research rabbit holes. I hope you'll join me!
HALLIE: This sounds so great and has me wishing my genealogical past wasn't rooted in Russian shtetls.
And asking: Are you interested in chasing down your own genealogical past and visiting the place(s) that are implanted in your DNA? If you could travel to discover your ancestors, where would you go (time? place?) and what would you want to know?
This is so interesting . . . and what a fascinating opportunity, Kathy, for exploring Scottish roots.
ReplyDeleteI have only a smattering of information regarding the genealogical past of my family [from England] . . . although I really have no clue as to how to do it, learning more is certainly an intriguing idea . . . .
Hallie, I have several cousins who have chased down our roots to those Russian shtetls but I have not. In fact, my cousin Joel just returned from Bialostok where he brushed the snow off ancestral gravestones in an ancient cemetery and sent us all pictures. I won't be doing that, but kudos to those who do. It is a mitzvah, I am sure.
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! I adore research. I've actually spent more time researching the families of others, studying everyone who left records in my Connecticut hometown during the American Revolution and what happened to them during and after the war. My own family is entirely of British background, the Seldens arriving early from England to become enslavers in Virginia. UGH. However my mother was a McDonald from Scotland and according to family lore our ancestor fled after 1745 to North Carolina, and later joined Allan MacDonald, husband of Flora, on the loyalist side. I have been told that early records in Scotland and North Carolina are scarce. What fun it would be to join a group in Edinburgh and to turn over research to look! (Selden)
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