[1] She earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in anthropology from the University of British Columbia and a journalism diploma from Langara College in Vancouver.
[1] After her first job as a typesetter for a local publisher, Smedman has spent her whole career working as a reporter and editor at Vancouver-area weekly newspapers.
Smedman used her own childhood experiences with homosexuality to fashion a child protagonist who, after changing into a magical creature and being rejected by her family, finds herself homeless on the streets.
Extinction, set in Wizards of the Coast's Forgotten Realms universe, made The New York Times Best Seller list in 2004.
[1] The Apparition Trail is an alternate-history fantasy which posits an 1884 Western Canada where the power imbalance between the First Nations and European settlers exists in a universe with magic and alternate physics.