Paul Sunga is the author of Red Dust, Red Sky and The Lions.  This site is about Paul's published novels, his current fiction writing projects, as well as his international development profile.   

Paul was born and schooled in Ottawa, Canada. He explored a number of occupations early in his career, working as a forklift driver, construction worker, refrigeration installer, fence builder, welder, pipe layer, and hospital porter in various regions of Canada. He worked for a time as a nickel miner in Thompson, Manitoba, which provided the sketches for the novel The Lions (Orca Books, 1992).

Paul began writing book-length fiction immediately after graduating from the University of Ottawa. At that time he became drawn to the escalating freedom struggle in South Africa, and eventually went to rural Lesotho as a volunteer with World University Services of Canada. He taught, wrote articles about South Africa during the press blackouts, and served as an advisor to the Ministry of Health. This period provided the material for his second novel, Red Dust, Red Sky (Coteau Books, 2008).

While he claims to be serious about writing, Paul is often sidetracked. After returning from Lesotho he embarked on his Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine at the University of British Columbia. This led him initially to teach pathophysiology and infectious diseases (Langara College in Vancouver), and later to provide public health advisory services to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He has worked extensively in more than a dozen CIDA focus countries in Africa and Asia. It is this interaction with developing country people, language and governments that motivates his current novel-in-progress, The Age of Wealth.