“Truthful and tender, a meticulously researched and fine reflection on the connection between art and animals.”

“Grant Hayter-Menzies is an accomplished historian and writer, and Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr brings a unique perspective to the wide shelf of books regarding Emily Carr… The author’s profound sympathy for all animals leads him to careful research into zoos, the trade in animals, animal behaviour and the long relationship between the legendary Canadian artist and the ‘human-imprinted primate’ who shared fifteen years with her. At once serious and fanciful, this is art history with a difference.”

“What animates this tale with force and purpose is the author’s profound respect for animals. Carr’s relationship with Woo is impeccably researched by Hayter-Menzies, but he goes a step further. He deepens his understanding of the bond between these two primates by visiting a present-day monkey sanctuary. I found this book enlightening, heartwarming, and distressing. Casting its shadow over Carr’s devotion to Woo is the question the author pursues throughout the book: how could the artist have given up her animal companion to languish in a cage at the Stanley Park Zoo? In trying to find an answer, readers too are brought face to face with what it means to be a human guardian to an animal, wild or domesticated, and how tragically such a loving relationship can end.”

“This is an extraordinary, profound, poignant and true story, brilliantly and fascinatingly told. Human and animal relationships are complex and, when they involve captive wild animals, troubling to say the least. Even when, as we find here, there is deep mutual affection. In such an unnatural situation there can rarely be a ‘happy ending.’ I have almost never read a book which I longed to read again, as soon as I had turned the last page. Such is the subtlety, sensitivity and skill of Grant Hayter-Menzies’ storytelling.”

“Meticulously researched but also indulging an unapologetic and compelling stream of authorial speculation, this imaginative biography depicts two figures from two different species whose relationship, if imperfect, was fascinating and consummately intimate. Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr will certainly provoke reflections about our own animal companions: how we live with them, how they live with us.”

Grant Hayter-Menzies has specialized in biographies of extraordinary women for over a decade, publishing the first full-length accounts of the lives of Charlotte Greenwood and Billie Burke, Princess Der Ling, Sarah Pike Conger, Pauline Benton, Lillian Carter and, most recently, Dorothy Brooke. He lives in Victoria, BC. He is donating 40% of his royalties from the sales of Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr to Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Sunderland, ON.