More to Come
Stephen is still writing. New pieces — on staying, on grief, on what AI is and is not for a person making sense of themselves during difficult times — will land here as they finish.
— In progress
Author of the Rise Again Series — three novels set on the Cape Breton coast about staying, leaving, and coming home.
Stephen Franks was born in Brampton, Ontario, fell in love with the East Coast somewhere along the way, and now lives in Canso, Nova Scotia, with his wife Laura.
The path was Ontario, then Prince Edward Island for a stretch that mattered, and finally semi-retirement to Canso on the coast of Chedabucto Bay. The Conversation is his first novel; The Push and The Pull follow. The trilogy is set on Cape Breton Island and asks one question across three books: what does it cost to belong to a place?
He also writes non-fiction. His book Climate Change and the Rise of Billionaire Oligarchy was published by Fox Island Press in 2026.
The books draw on what he knows: the yellow kitchens, the rattling windows, the wind that does not stop, the particular stubbornness of people who stay, the particular ache of people who leave. They draw on grief, on more than thirty years of teaching, and on what artificial intelligence is, and is not, for a person trying to make sense of themselves during difficult times.
For thirty years he told stories to captive audiences. Now he is inviting you in.
The novels did not arrive out of nowhere. They came out of thirty years of teaching, two narratives that turned a person, and the questions a Cape Breton coast keeps asking on quiet evenings. Three pieces of writing about that. More to come.
The bell is struck. The bell stops being struck. The bell goes on ringing inside the listener. A reflection on thirty years of teaching, and the one Japanese word that gave the work its name.
Read the philosophy →A college lounge in Charlottetown, an ex-military instructor, and a quiet certainty about who would make it. A kitchen table in middle age, two people studying for a Master’s, and the one across from you who got you through. Two stories.
Read the reflections →Stephen is still writing. New pieces — on staying, on grief, on what AI is and is not for a person making sense of themselves during difficult times — will land here as they finish.
— In progressThree novels in the Rise Again Series. Each stands alone; together they trace one Cape Breton family across a generation.
Stephen reads his email. Reach out about the books, the trilogy, or anything else.
