Rina writes fiction and nonfiction for young people. Her stories are inspired by her travels and her past work as a conservation biologist studying endangered species.
Her love of wildlife conservation started with a book: In the Shadow of Man by Dr. Jane Goodall. Rina earned a B.Sc. in Biology and an M.Sc. in Animal behavior, then went on to work as a conservation biologist for several international NGOs around the world.
A few of her favorite jobs were: hand-raising and releasing endangered parrots back to the wild, climbing giant tropical trees in the Mauritian rainforest to monitor nestlings, surveying remote landscapes of Madagascar for an elusive mongoose, and studying the world’s rarest hawk in the Caribbean. She has published twenty scientific papers and given seminars on her research here in Canada and abroad.
When her two kids were very young, her family moved to Madagascar and lived there for seven years. It was an experience unlike anything else.
Since returning to Canada in 2016, Rina has focused on storytelling as a way to connect young people to nature. She writes tall tales of eco-adventure and eco-nonfiction, and does science workshops in the classroom for students.
She is an associate member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), a friend to CANSCAIP and a Canada Council for the Arts literary grant recipient.
She lives in Guelph, Ontario with her partner Lance, who is Executive Director of the not-for-profit Wildlife Preservation Canada, their two teenage boys, a Newfoundland dog, and a rescued royal python.
Click here to read about one of Rina’s adventures in Madagascar.
Rina Nichols 