Christian Fennell

Early life

Always an avid reader, Christian Fennell first discovered his love of writing around the age of 12 when he began to pen short stories, plays, and commercials for his own amusement. By the time he reached high school, he was secretly dabbling in poetry, as well. After graduating from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with a BA in English Language and Literature/Letters, Christian Fennell travelled the world for a period of two years, indulging in his favourite hobby all the while, filling up multiple notebooks with his thoughts, observations, poems, and story outlines.

Career

As a young man, Christian Fennell wrote screenplays and made independent films, which presaged and eventually facilitated his entry into Canada’s professional broadcast industry. Soon after, he branched out into directing commercials, extreme sports series, and working second unit on feature films. In 1998, Fennell founded the production company Wyndham Studios Entertainment in order to centralize his various projects. He ran the production company for 14 years before leaving the film and television industry entirely to pursue his lifelong love affair with the written word.

In 2012, he dedicated himself totally to writing fiction and non-fiction meant for print, enjoying a significant degree of success two years later when he became a columnist and Fiction Editor at The Prague Review.

By the year 2020, Fennell had written and published his first book, a collection of short stories titled Torrents of Our Time. Only a year after that, he published his first novel, The Fiddler in the Night, while at the same time somehow managing to co-found Montreal Publishing Company, a boutique publishing house known for printing and distributing works of poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction. In 2022, his successes continued, as he accepted a position as Editor-In-Chief of The Nelligan Review, a bilingual magazine centered around the arts and culture. That same year, he also published his sophomore novel, LOVE, GUNS & GOD in America.

Over the years, essays, opinion pieces, and short stories written by Christian Fennell have appeared in a number of magazines, journals, and collected works of note. Some of these include Chaleur Magazine, Litro Magazine, XRAY Literary Magazine, Dreamers Magazine, Spark: A Creative Anthology, Kind Writers Anthology, Liars’ League London, Wilderness House Literary Review, and .Cent Magazine.

All totalled, Fennell has accumulated more than a quarter century of experience working in the Canadian and international media, including his tenure in the film and television industry in addition to the print and publishing industry.

As a writer, Fennell has stated that his guiding philosophy is “understanding (his) authentic self, and then developing an ultimate faith in that.”

As an editor and publisher, he has characterized his leadership style as “helping to establish, and wanting to work with, people with a solid conviction in themselves, tempered with a broad understanding of the world, while possessing a high degree of empathy and gratitude.”

In an interview with Lisa Haselton of Lisa Haselton Books, Reviews & Interviews conducted in November of 2020, Christian Fennell was asked to share some advice with young and aspiring writers. He gave a frank reply, musing, “Fall in love with your ability to bend words to your will. Forget everything else. Find the joy. Remember always, there are no absolutes. Nada. None. Nothing is true. Other than perhaps, make it good, and then go back and make it a hell of a lot better than that.”

In the past, Christian Fennell enjoyed coaching minor-league sports, especially lacrosse. He was instrumental in establishing Oakville, Ontario’s junior lacrosse team, and even served on the advisory board of the inaugural World Indoor Lacrosse tournament, the Heritage Cup, in 2002.

Net Worth

Unknown