For over thirty years the memories of Gwen Lamont's childhood were buried beneath a protective gauze of forgetting. Once those years were over, once those memories were safely hidden, she never spoke of them again. No one knew of her chaotic poor family. No one knew she had been a child bride. No one knew about her rotten teeth, or how her father's grandest con had resulted in her new smile. She had promised never to tell. In time those years became like the 13th floor of a hotel: there but renamed, "happy normal childhood", to make everyone comfortable. But Gwen wasn't comfortable and as the years went by the weight of her past became too much for her to bear. Even though she knew to exhume the past would rip open her well-constructed life, she also knew that was exactly what she had to do.

Gwen tells this remarkable story of resilience in The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, a memoir about what happens when we are forced to reconcile ourselves with a long-forgotten past and with the characters who shaped it. It is also about family secrets and memory and how by breaking her promises and revealing her secrets, she was able to face the truth about her life and write her young self-home. (From Ginger Press)

Gwen Lamont holds a BA in sociology, a BSW, and an MSW with awards for scholarship. In 2019 she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-fiction from the University of King's College. Lamont was shortlisted for the 2018 Geist Postcard Contest for What's in A Smile and longlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her story Survivor's Guilt. The View From Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, is her first book.