Every winter for the past seven years, one of the world’s best-selling novelists has come to the Leighton Artists' Colony. Douglas Kennedy’s annual visit and award-winning career is one of the Centre’s best-kept secrets – and Kennedy is not just a secret in Banff. Earlier this year, Time magazine called him “the most successful American novelist America doesn’t know.”

Kennedy was born in Manhattan in 1955, and at 21 he moved to Dublin to pursue a career in the theatre. Kennedy ran the Abbey Theatre’s second house, The Peacock, and says that the highlight of his time as an arts manager was signing actor Liam Neeson to his first professional contract.

In 1988, Kennedy and his wife Grace Carley moved to London, where his career as a writer began to take off. By the mid-1990s, he received back-to-back $1-million advances and was heralded as the next John Grisham. In 2001, his Graham Greene-inspired novel The Pursuit of Happiness was published to international acclaim, and his career as a critically praised bestselling author was secured. His work has since been translated into 18 languages. In 2007, he was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

In the Leighton Artists' Colony, Kennedy wrote, revised, and edited a series of novels, including A Special Relationship (2003), State of the Union (2005), Temptation (2006), and The Woman in the Fifth (2007), which sold a remarkable 265,000 hardcover copies this past year in France alone.

Earlier this winter, I spoke to Kennedy by phone from his home in London.

What is it about The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists' Colony that you have found so attractive over the years?

The pleasure of The Banff Centre is it allows you to either engage or disengage with people. If you want to disappear, you can. If you want to find a conversation, you can. I’ve made some great friends over the years at Banff. It is also the sense of escape from the larger world. Other than your laundry, everything else is done for you.

What do see in your mind’s eye when you think of Banff?

I am a man of routine. When I’m in Banff, I work very hard. I up my quota, from 500 to 1,000 words a day, to 2,000 words a day. I take one day a week off, and go cross-country skiing at the Nordic Centre in the morning, then I go to Calgary for lunch, and go to a couple of art house films.

I think my perfect moment in Banff is staggering out of my studio at about 2:30 a.m., there is snow coming down, it is pitch black, and the work has been good. And I’ve just had a small glass of malt whiskey.

Douglas Kennedy’s forthcoming novel, Leaving the World, was written in the Leighton Artists' Colony, and will be published in 2009 in Canada by Random House.