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France Adams (Francais)
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France Adams habite Winnipeg depuis son départ de Québec, il y a longtemps. Mère de deux garçons, enseignante et orthopédagogue, elle travaille au niveau préscolaire, primaire et universitaire. Lors d'un séjour de 18 mois en Australie, elle découvre le cercle des conteurs et s'initie au conte oral. Elle a publié des nouvelles : Beyond Words et Simply Write (Heart Space Anthology), des récits épistolaires avec Bertrand Nayet et Charles Leblanc : Voyages en papier (Blé, 2003); des livres pour enfants : Du pain, du lait, des oeufs, du beurre (Plaines, 2004) et Regarde par-ci! Regarde par-là! Regarde partout! (Plaines, 2005). Elle termine une pièce de théâtre pour enfants intitulée Le garçon pommier qui sera présentée en 2007 par le Cercle Molière. |
George Amabile
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George Amabile has published poetry, fiction and non-fiction in journals and anthologies in Canada, the USA, Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand, and has published eight books. Among his many awards, he includes the CAA National Prize for Literature for The Presence of Fire, first prize in the Sidney Booktown International Poetry Contest, and a third prize in both the CBC Literary Competition and the Petra Kenney International Poetry Competition. He is the subject of a special issue of Prairie Fire (2001). His most recent publication is Tasting the Dark: New and Selected Poems (The Muses' Company). Amabile lives in Winnipeg. |
Debra Anderson
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An award-winning writer, playwright and film maker, Debra Anderson is a recipient of the prestigious George Ryga Award for Playwriting and a graduate of the York University Creative Writing Program. A regular on the Toronto reading scene for most of the last decade, Anderson has published widely in journals, and her work has been anthologized in Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Bent: On Writing, and the Lambda-nominated Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity. Her rawly-funny first novel, Code White (McGilligan), finds resilience and even wisdom in the chaos of a psych ward. Anderson currently resides in Toronto, where she was born and raised. |
Dale Auger
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Dale Auger, a Sakaw Cree from the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta, has established himself as a speaker, writer, educator, and visual artist; he is in demand in Canada and internationally for his paintings, lectures, and workshops. His first book, Mwâkwa Talks to the Loon: A Cree Story for Children (Heritage House), brings his talents and passions into perfect balance. Written in English and Cree, the story captures the intricate links between Native spirituality and the laws of nature, and feels both present and timeless. Auger\'s extraordinary watercolor paintings are vivid and beautiful. He lives in Bragg Creek, Alberta. |
Jamie Bastedo
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Jamie Bastedo is a writer and environmental consultant living in Yellowknife. His outstanding contributions to the conservation and promotion of northern nature earned him the Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal, and his passion for popularizing natural science brought him national honor when he won the 2002 Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion. Established as an adult non-fiction writer, Red Deer Press is publishing his first two books for young audiences: Free as the Wind tells a true story about Sable Island horses, and On Thin Ice raises warning flags about the rapid changes in both climate and culture in Canada's Arctic. |
C C Benison
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C.C. Benison is the nom de plume for Winnipeg writer and editor Doug Whiteway. His three mystery novels set in England, Death at Buckingham Palace, Death At Sandringham House, and Death at Windsor Castle, have been translated into three languages. A Carleton University journalism graduate, he has been a reporter and feature writer for newspapers and magazines, and currently edits The Beaver, Canada's history magazine. He has received a National Magazine Award, two Western Magazine Awards, and an Arthur Ellis Award for best first mystery novel. His newest mystery novel, Death in Cold Type (Signature Editions), is set in Winnipeg. |
Laurie Block
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Laurie Block is a poet, playwright, and storyteller who grew up in Winnipeg and now calls Brandon home. His full-length play, The Tomato King, was produced by Theatre Projects of Manitoba in 1997. His short story, "While the Librarian Sleeps" won the Prairie Fire fiction contest and a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for fiction. He has published three volumes of poetry: Governing Bodies, the bilingual Foreign Graces/Bendiciones Ajenas, and most recently Time out of Mind (Oolichan), an exploration of Alzheimer\'s gradual erosion of his mother\'s self. This moving collection of poems is the map of their journey into and out of that darkness. |
Dennis Bock
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Dennis Bock's first book of stories, Olympia, won the 1998 Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Award, the inaugural Danuta Gleed Award for best first collection of stories by a Canadian author and the British Betty Trask Award. His best-selling first novel, The Ash Garden, won the Japan-Canada Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Kiriyama Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Caribbean and Canada Region). His new novel, The Communist's Daughter (HarperCollins), brings the legendary Canadian doctor Norman Bethune--visionary, radical, martyr--vividly to life. Bock lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario. |
Gail Bowen
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Gail Bowen\'s Joanne Kilbourn mysteries have made her one of Canada\'s most popular crime writers. The first in the series, Deadly Appearances, was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1990, and A Colder Kind of Death won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award in 1994. Her new novel, The Endless Knot (McClelland & Stewart), is the tenth in the series. Bowen has also written five plays that have been produced across Canada, and several of her mysteries have been made into TV movies starring Wendy Crewson as Joanne. Head of the English Department at the First Nations University of Canada, Bowen lives in Regina. |
Brian Brennan
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Brian Brennan is an award-winning Alberta author who specializes in books about the people and the social history of Western Canada. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he immigrated to Canada in 1966 and has lived in Calgary since 1974. He spent twenty-five years as a full-time journalist with the Calgary Herald, writing columns and feature stories, before leaving to devote his time to writing books, giving radio talks, and playing the piano. His titles include Boondoggles, Bonanzas, and Other Alberta Stories and Scoundrels and Scallywags: Characters from Alberta\'s Past. His new book is How the West Was Written: The Life and Times of James H. Gray (Fifth House). |
Martha Brooks
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Martha Brooks is a Winnipeg artist who is acclaimed as both a writer and a jazz singer. Among the long list of writing awards are the Mr. Christie Book Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the Vicki Metcalf Award, the IBBY Honor Award, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year for Young People Award, the Chalmers Best Canadian Children's Play Award, and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award. She has been nominated for the Governor General's Award four times, winning it in 2002 for Confessions of a Heartless Girl (Groundwood). Her debut CD, Change of Heart, won the Prairie Music Award for outstanding jazz album that same year. |
Sigmund Brouwer
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Sigmund Brouwer didn't come easily to reading, and much of his energy as a writer now is devoted to supporting kids in their efforts to become better readers. "Kids who can read and write well when they get out of school have a lot better chance of reaching their dreams than kids who still struggle with it," he says. He has an astonishing number of new titles coming soon from Orca, all in various series targeting reluctant readers. Among them are Timberwolf Chase and Timberwolf Revenge from the Echoes Series, Sewer Rats, from Orca Currents, and Rebel Glory from Orca Sports. Brouwer lives in Red Deer. |
Heather Summerhayes Cariou
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Heather Summerhayes Cariou was born, raised and educated in Ontario, and has spent much of her adult life on stages all across Canada and off-Broadway, and on location with her actor-husband, Len Cariou. Her book, Sixtyfive Roses: A Sisters Memoir (McArthur & Company), is a graceful memoir tracing the challenges and gifts of life with her sister, Pam, who suffered from the terminal disease Cystic Fibrosis. Diagnosed at the age of four, and given only months to live, the family took on the challenge, eventually founding the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Cariou emigrated to New York City in 1983. |
Simone Chaput (Francais)
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Originaire de Saint-Boniface (Manitoba), Simone Chaput étudie au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface et à l'Université du Manitoba. En 1978, elle termine une maîtreise en littérature à l'Université de Toronto. Au retour d'un stage en littérature/théâtre a l'Universitâé de Londres et d'un séjours en France, en Italie et en Grèce, elle commence à écrire. Son premier roman, La Vigne amère (Blé, 1989) est couronné du prix littéraire La Liberté. Un piano dans le noir (Blé, 1991), obtient lui aussi le prix littéraire La Liberté.. Elle public un troisième roman en français, Le Coulonneux (Blé, 1998), des nouvelles, Incidents de parcours (Blé, 2000), et un roman en anglais, Santiago (Turnstone Press, 2004). Simone enseigne la langue et la littérature française au Collegiate de l'Université de Winnipeg. |
Ying Chen (Francais)
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Née à Shanghai en 1961, Ying Chen obtient dans cette ville une licence en lettres françaises. Outre le dialecte de sa région et le mandarin, elle a appris le russe, l'italien, l'anglais et le français. En 1989, elle vient étudier à l'Université McGill. Pour tromper la nostalgie de sa Chine natale, elle se met à écrire jusqu'à douze heures par jour. Écrivaine de romans, notamment La mémoire de l'eau et Lettres chinoises, elle publie en 1995 L'Ingratitude, qui a été en lice pour le prix Fémina et qui a obtenu le prix Québec-Paris et le prix des lectrices d'Elle-Québec. Son dernier roman est Le Mangeur, publié par les Éditions Boréal en 2006. |
Richard Clewes
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Richard Clewes is an internationally recognized creative director whose work in advertising has won prizes in the UK, the US, Canada and at the Cannes Advertising Film Festival. In the aftermath of his estranged wife's suicide, he left the safe confines of a familiar life and embarked on a physical-and spiritual-quest. Finding Lily (Key Porter) is the record of a trip through four continents and his own dark underworld. Part travelogue, part contemplation, peppered with sharp observations, evocative drawings, and the wisdom of writers of all sorts, Finding Lily is an assured debut. Clewes lives in Toronto. |
Jan Conn
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Jan Conn is both a research scientist working on malarial mosquitoes, and a successful poet, with six collections to her credit. South of the Tudo Bem Café was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, and a suite of poems, Amazonia, won second prize in the CBC Literary Awards. Her new book, Jaguar Rain (Brick Books), travels the Amazon with the remarkable painter-explorer Margaret Mee (1909-88) as guide. Written with Mee's journals and illustrations, Jaguar Rain is a rare text: at once a book of stand-alone poems and a work of scholarship. Roo Borson calls it "a book of marvels from the tropical zone of poetry." Conn lives in Albany, NY. |
MÉIra Cook
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Méira Cook was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, and came to Canada in the late 1980s. She has published three poetry collections, A Fine Grammar of Bones, Toward a Catalogue of Falling, and Slovenly Love (Brick Books), a couple of chapbooks, and a novel, The Blood Girls. Toward a Catalogue of Falling was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, Writing Lovers: Reading Canadian Love Poetry by Women (Wilfred Laurier). Cook lives and writes in Winnipeg. |
Gloe Cormie
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Winnipegger Gloe Cormie's poetry collection, Sea Salt, Red Oven Mitts and the Blues, was a finalist for several awards, and her second poetry book, Under a Different Dark Sky (Augustine Hand Press), has recently been completed. She has won recognition for her work in literary competitions, including in Prairie Fire. The oral aspect of her poetry is as important as the written aspect, thus Cormie has given poetry readings in several Canadian, American and Asian cities, including Chicago, New York, Seoul and Tokyo, and broadcast her poems nationally on CBC radio. She is an active member of the League of Canadian Poets, and has been re-elected as the 2006-07 Manitoba Representative. |
Christopher Paul Curtis
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Christopher Paul Curtis made an outstanding debut with The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, which was showered with praise, including ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist 25 Top Black History Picks for Youth, and a New York Times Best Book. His second novel, Bud, Not Buddy, is the first book ever to receive both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award, an award given each year to a black writer for an inspirational and educational contribution to literature. His new book is Mr Chickee's Magic Money (Random House). Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan, but makes his home now in Windsor, Ontario. |
Rosanna Deerchild
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Rosanna Deerchild is Cree from South Indian Lake, Manitoba. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines including Prairie Fire and CV2. She has been a member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective since its inception in 1999. This group of Manitoba writers has released two collections, urban kool and Bone Memory, and a live spoken word CD, Red City. Her work has most recently been published in Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry (Talonbooks), edited by Jon Paul Fiorentino and Robert Kroetsch. She has finished her first manuscript, entitled This is a small northern town, and is now working on her second collection. Deerchild lives in Winnipeg. |
Barry Dempster
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Barry Dempster has published nine collections of poetry, a children's book, two volumes of short stories, and a novel, The Ascension of Jesse Rapture. He came to national attention in 1982 when his first poetry collection was nominated for a Governor General's Award; he has since received a Confederation Poets Prize and a Petra Kenney Award. His most recent book, The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books), a clear-eyed and emotionally-charged collection, was nominated for a 2005 Governor General's Award, and won the CAA Jack Chalmers Poetry Award. Born and raised in Toronto, he lives now in Holland Landing, north of the city. |
David Elias
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David Elias writes in a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and children's literature. He has published two collections of stories, Crossing the Line and Places of Grace, which received strong critical and audience response. His short story "How I Crossed Over" from Places of Grace was a finalist for the 1995 Journey Prize. His warmly funny first novel, Sunday Afternoon (Coteau), was shortlisted for The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Elias lives in Winnipeg, and divides his time between teaching and writing. |
Joe Fiorito
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Joe Fiorito has written city columns for the National Post, the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette, and is now a city columnist at the Toronto Star. He is the author of an internationally-acclaimed memoir, The Closer We Are to Dying, as well as two collections of newspaper columns, Comfort Me with Apples and Tango on the Main. His novel, The Song Beneath the Ice, won the 2003 City of Toronto Book Award. He has lived in Toronto for the past eight years, and his new book, Union Station: Stories of the New Toronto (McClelland & Stewart), is a clear-eyed tour of the city that Canadians love to hate. |
Paul Friesen
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Paul Friesen has been writing most of his literate life. When he began frequenting (if not inhabiting) Heaven Art & Book Café in 1995, his writing took on a more audience-specific intent. That now-mythical place was the site of his first public readings. His linguistic impulses, coupled with a quasi-pathological fascination with language, mean most of his work falls incidentally and mostly by accident into the live spoken word genre. He can always be found on the first Tuesday of every month at the Academy Bar & Oven for Speaking Crow, Winnipeg's longest-running open-mic literary event. |
Tony G De Luca
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Tony G. De Luca was born in Lappano, Cosenza, Italy and came to Canada in 1959. After graduating from Gordon Bell H. School, he worked in the real estate industry until De Luca's was established in 1969. Tony and his three bothers Frank, Pasquale, Peter, together with Papa Vincenzo and mother Emilia, worked in the store that expanded to include a wholesale division, a restaurant, a cooking school and a wine store. Their most recent accomplishments are a new cooking school and meeting centre at 956 Portage Avenue, and a new cookbook: The Italian Way: Cooking with the De Luca's (Alba Publishing). |
Lise Gaboury-Diallo (Francais)
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Née à Saint-Boniface (Manitoba), Lise Gaboury-Diallo est professeure de langue française et des littératures francophones au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface (MB). Elle est l'auteure de nombreux articles critiques, de nouvelles et textes divers, dont 4 recueils de poésie : Subliminales (1999), transitions (2002), Poste restante : cartes poétiques du Sénégal (2005) et Homestead, poèmes du coeur de l'Ouest (2005), oeuvre pour laquelle elle a remporté le premier prix, catégorie poésie française, des Prix littéraires Radio-Canada 2004. Ce recueil inclut la traduction de Mark Stout, les illustrations d'Étienne Gaboury, d'Anna Binta Diallo et les photographies de Laurence Véron. |
Linda Ghan
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Originally from a Jewish farming community in southern Saskatchewan, Linda Ghan has written fiction, drama, and journalism in Jamaica, Montreal, and Japan. Her first novel, A Gift of Sky, had two editions in Canada as well as publication in translation in Japan. Her children's story, Muhla, The Fair One, was commissioned and performed by Montreal's Black Theatre Workshop and published by Nuage Editions. She has written articles for Japanese dailies, and published a non-fiction book, Gaston Petit: The Kimono and the Cross. Her new novel, Sosi (Signature Editions), follows a young Turkish-Armenian girl fleeing Turkey in the early 20th century. Ghan lives in Montreal. |
Michelle GrÉGoire
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A talented composer and versatile performer, jazz pianist Michelle Grégoire holds an undergraduate jazz degree from St. Francis Xavier University and a Master's in Jazz Studies from the Florida State University. An active freelance musician since 1984, Grégoire is a sought-after leader and sideperson, and has played with the who's-who on the Canadian jazz scene. She won the Project COOL competition in 2004, which resulted in her first CD, Reaching, which was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award and listed as one of the best of the year by CBC's After Hours. Grégoire lives in Winnipeg. |
Rawi Hage
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Rawi Hage was born in 1964 in Beirut, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war. At 18, he immigrated to New York, and eventually moved to Montreal. He is a visual artist and curator, whose work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world. His fiction has appeared in numerous journals, and this year, Anansi published De Niro's Game, a novel of two young men in war-torn Beirut. Hage brilliantly fuses vivid, jump-cut cinematic imagery with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry in this powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, and what comes after. |
Richard Harrison
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Richard Harrison is the author of five books of poetry, including Hero of the Play and Big Breath of a Wish which won the City of Calgary/W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. His poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, and his work has been featured on many TV and radio broadcasts including Adrienne Clarkson Presents and Peter Gzowski's Morningside. Dionne Brand calls his powerful new collection, Worthy of His Fall (Wolsak & Wynn), "a lyric on masculinity." Harrison lives in Calgary where he teaches English and Creative Writing at Mount Royal College. |
Tomson Highway
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Tomson Highway, the proud son of legendary caribou hunter and world championship dogsled racer, Joe Highway, was born in a tent pitched in a snow bank in the extreme northwest corner of Manitoba. Among his acclaimed works are a best-selling novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen, and several plays, The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Rose, and most recently, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout (Talonbooks). He has three children's books to his credit, all written bilingually in Cree and English, and has toured his cabaret work throughout Europe and North America. He divides his year between a cottage near Sudbury and an apartment in the south of France. |
Linda Holeman
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Before writing historic novels for adults, Linda Holeman was well-known for her writing for young adults with such books as Search of the Moon King's Daughter, which won numerous awards including the McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award and the Mr Christie Book Award Silver Seal. She has published short story collections for both young adults and adults. Her historical novel, The Linnet Bird, has appeared in ten countries. Her newest title, The Moonlit Cage (McArthur & Company), is slated already for six. The Globe and Mail says it is "definitely a book you want to talk about." Holeman lives in Winnipeg. |
Anita Horrocks
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Anita Horrocks' novels for young adults have all enjoyed critical acclaim and a lively readership. Breath of a Ghost was a finalist for the Writers Guild of Alberta Children's Literature Award. What They Don't Know won both that award and a Red Maple Award. Topher also won the Writers Guild of Alberta Children's Literature Award and was a runner-up for the Golden Eagle Children's Choice Award. Almost Eden, her new release from Tundra, is her first novel to draw on her own Mennonite background growing up in Winkler. Horrocks lives with her husband in Lethbridge. |
Sally Ito
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Sally Ito studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta, and traveled on scholarship to Japan, where she translated Japanese poetry. Her first book, Frogs in the Rain Barrel, was runner-up for the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. Her second, Floating Shore (Mercury Press), won the Writers Guild of Alberta Book Award for short fiction, and was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Prize and the City of Edmonton Book Prize. Her work has appeared in literary journals, and in Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets and Poets 88. Ito teaches creative writing at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. |
Mark Anthony Jarman
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Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of 19 Knives, New Orleans is Sinking, and the travel book Ireland's Eye (Anansi). His hockey novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca's list of 50 Essential Canadian Books. He has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Prize and Best American Essays, he won a Gold National Magazine Award for nonfiction, has twice won the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award, and has been included in The Journey Prize Anthology and Best Canadian Stories. He is this year's winner of Prairie Fire's Award for Non-Fiction. Jarman lives in Fredericton where he teaches at the University of New Brunswick and serves as fiction editor for The Fiddlehead. |
Sarah Klassen
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Sarah Klassen reads, writes and sometimes teaches in Winnipeg where she was born. Journey to Yalta, her first book, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; her second, Violence and Mercy, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Three of her books - Violence and Mercy, Dangerous Elements, and Simon Weil: Songs of Hunger and Love - have been recognized with nominations for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and Peony Season, a short fiction collection, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award. Her long poem, "In Retrospect," which won a National Magazine Gold Award, appears in her new volume, the quietly powerful A Curious Beatitude (The Muses' Company). |
M Travis Lane
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M Travis Lane has established herself as a pre-eminent Canadian poet, with many acclaimed titles to her credit. Her awards include several prizes from literary journals - Arc, Fiddlehead, Amethyst Review, and Atlantic Poetry - as well as the 1980 Pat Lowther Award for Divinations and the 2002 Atlantic Canada Poetry Award for Keeping Afloat. In 2003, she received the Alden Nowlan Award for Literary Excellence in the English Language. Her new book, Touch Earth, has just been published by Guernica Editions. An honorary research associate in the University of New Brunswick's English Department, she lives in Fredericton. Prairie Fire will present her with the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award at THIN AIR. |
Annette Lapointe
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Annette Lapointe was born in Saskatoon on the coldest day of 1978 to hippy parents whose pursuit of pastoral bliss led Annette to be schooled mostly in a small, scary town outside the city, for which they have since apologized. She did her BA at the University of Saskatchewan, and her MA there and at Memorial University. After a stint teaching ESL in South Korea and Women's Studies in Canada, she is pursuing doctoral studies in English at the University of Manitoba. She has just published Stolen (Anvil), featuring a surprisingly sympathetic prairie anti-hero. In a rave review, the Globe and Mail called it "an exceptional first novel." |
Charles Leblanc (Francais)
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Né une seule fois à Montréal en 1950, Charles Leblanc a vécu la moitié de sa vie au Manitoba. Titulaire de baccalauréats en sciences sociales et en sciences économiques et d'un certificat en traduction. N'ayant pu se décider, il a eu plusieurs carrières : chercheur et enseignant en sciences économiques, serveur de bar, copropriétaire d'une boîte de nuit, acteur professionnel, coordonnateur d'événements artistiques, ouvrier industriel et traducteur. Des constantes : le théâtre (comédien au sein de plusieurs troupes, dont le Cercle Molière) et la poésie (cinq recueils publiés aux Éditions du Blé). Le dernier, l'appétit du compteur (2003), a mérité le prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault en 2005. |
Keith Maillard
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Keith Maillard was born in Wheeling, WV, in 1942 and has lived in Vancouver since 1970. He won the Gerald Lampert Award for his poetry collection, Dementia Americana. His novels have been shortlisted for several prizes, including the Governor General's Literary Award and the Commonwealth Literary Prize for Fiction. Motet won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. In 2004 he was awarded the Polish American Historical Association's Creative Arts Prize for The Clarinet Polka, inducted into the Wheeling, West Virginia Hall of Fame, and awarded the West Virginia Library Association Literary Merit Award. His new novel, Looking Good, is the fourth in his epic project, Difficulty at the Beginning (Brindle & Glass). |
Chandra Mayor
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Chandra Mayor's work has been anthologized in Exposed: New Writing by Women, The Cyclops Review '02, Breathing Fire II, and Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry. Her first book, August Witch: poems, was short-listed for the Carol Shields Winnipeg book award and the Mary Scorer Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher, and won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for best first book. Her second book, Cherry (conundrum), a novel set in the Winnipeg skinhead/punk scene of the early 90s, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. Mayor was recognized with the John Hirsch Award for most promising writer. She lives in Winnipeg. |
Steve Mcormond
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Steve McOrmond was born in Nova Scotia and grew up on Prince Edward Island. His poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology, Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets. Among his awards are the Milton Acorn Poetry Award, the Alfred G Bailey Prize, second prize in This Magazine's Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and a "Highly Commended" designation in the 2005 Petra Kenney International Poetry Competition. His first book, Lean Days, met with rave reviews and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Wolsak & Wynn has just released his brilliant new volume, Primer on the Hereafter. McOrmond lives in Toronto. |
AndrÉE A Michaud
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Andrée A Michaud has built a distinguished oeuvre since La Femme de Sath, a book unanimously acclaimed by critics in Quebec. Her fifth novel, Le Ravissement, won a Governor General's Award for Fiction in 2001, and was nominated for several other prizes, as was Le Pendu de Trempes. This latter title has just been appeared as The River of Dead Trees (Coach House). This elegant translation by Nathalie Stephens tracks a man who is obsessively untangling history to discover the cause of a childhood friend's death. A Radio-Canada review warns: "This book will make readers experience moments of anxiety bordering on insanity." Michaud lives in Montreal. |
AndrÉE A. Michaud (Francais)
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Andrée A. Michaud est née à Saint-Sébastien (Haute-Beauce). Les paysages de son enfance et de son adolescence ont profondément marqué son oeuvre. Elle a publié cinq romans unanimement salués par la critique : Le Ravissement (L'Instant même, 2001), prix du Gouverneur général en 2001, Les Derniers Jours de Noah Eisenbaum (L'Instant même, 1998), Alias Charlie (Leméac, 1994), Portraits d'après modèles (Leméac, 1991) et La Femme de Sath (QA, 1987). Elle a également écrit deux textes pour le théâtre, un recueil de textes « imagés » intitulé Projections (J'ai vu, 2003), en collaboration avec la photographe Angela Grauerholz, ainsi que divers textes de fiction et commentaires critiques dans différents périodiques. |
Carmelo Militano
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Carmelo Militano has published two chapbooks of poetry, Ariadne's Thread and The Minotaur's Keys. His first book, Adriadne's Thread, won the F.G. Bressani Award for poetry in 2004. In 2002, he won the San Bernardo Literary Prize for Poetry, awarded to an Italian living abroad. Militano has done freelance writing and broadcasting for CBC Radio One, and is a poetry reviewer for CV2. He is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers, and the Manitoba Writers Guild. His latest work is a travelogue/memoir called The Fate of Olives (Olive Press). He lives in Winnipeg. |
Alayna Munce
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Alayna Munce grew up in Huntsville, Ontario, and has spent most of her adulthood in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto. Her work has appeared in various Canadian literary journals and has three times won prizes in Grain's annual Short Grain Contest. In 2003 she won second prize in the CBC Literary Awards' travel writing category, and in 2004 she was featured in Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets. Her debut novel, When I Was Young & In My Prime (Nightwood Editions), a pastiche of voices, diary entries, conversations, and lists, has met with critical acclaim from every direction, and was nominated for the 2006 Trillium Book Award. |
Angela Narth
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Angela Narth is a Winnipeg writer who brings to her work a background in educational psychology and plenty of experience in the classroom. She has written three books for children, and they've gathered both critical attention and loyal fans. Her first book, Simon with Two Left Feet, about a clumsy Canada Goose, was short-listed for the McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award in 2002. Her newest book, Fergus, Prince of Frogs (GWEV Publishing) is a medieval tale about a homely frog who teaches his friends what friendship and belonging is all about. It was shortlisted for this year's McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award. |
Steve Noyes
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Steve Noyes has received strong commendations for both his poetry and his short fiction. Responding to his first collection, Backing into Heaven, Al Purdy put it this way: "In a sober and carefully understated voice I say: this is a damn good poet." Noyes taught English at Qing Hua University in Beijing and in Dong Yan Jiao, a small town outside Beijing, in 1997-1998, and that experience provides the backdrop for his evocative new book, Ghost Country (Brick Books). At once lyrical and unsentimental, these poems spring from a lover of a culture who is also, inescapably, an outsider. Noyes grew up in Winnipeg and lives in Victoria, BC. |
Anna Paganelli
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Anna Paganelli was born in Valenzano, Bari in the Italian region of Puglie and came to Canada in 1967. After 15 years of experience in the specialty food industry, Anna decided to join the De Luca
family as instructor of the De Luca's cooking school. Anna prepared all the food for the pictures in the recently published cookbook, The Italian Way: Cooking with the De Luca's (Alba Publishing). |
Nicole Pellegrin (Francais)
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Née en France en 1944, Nicole Pellegrin est chargée de recherches en histoire au CNRS à Paris. Elle s'intéresse à la période du XVIe au XIXe siècles pour comprendre la culture matérielle des sociétés préindustrielles et les façons de faire communes ou différentes selon l'un ou l'autre sexe. Elle a étudié, entre autres, les sociétés de jeunesse et leurs fêtes, l'utilisation de divers objets textiles pour définir l'identité et les lieux d'apprentissage du travail au féminin. Elle a publié de nombreux articles et livres sur les pratiques vestimentaires, les femmes travesties et les fêtes collectives. Dernière parution : Histoires d'Historiennes (Univ. de Saint-Étienne, 2006). |
Louisa Picoux (Francais)
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Louisa Picoux est née en Espagne en 1936. Après des études en France, elle enseigne le français et l'espagnol au Vietnam et en Côte-d'Ivoire. Arrivée au Manitoba en 1978, elle poursuit des études à l'Université du Manitoba et au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface. Elle devient ensuite bibliothécaire. Elle a publié au Manitoba, en France et au Québec plusieurs livres pour les jeunes, notamment Légendes manitobaines (Plaines, 1987), Pauline, détective en tuque (Blé, 1991) et À la recherche de Riel (Blé, 2002). Elle lance un roman pour les jeunes, Pas de panique, au cours du présent festival. |
Laurent Poliquin (Francais)
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Laurent Poliquin oeuvre dans le milieu de l'édition littéraire au Manitoba. Il a publié trois recueils de poèmes aux Éditions des Plaines, dont Le vertigo du tremble (2005). Ses poèmes ont également été publiés en revue au Québec et en France. En 2006, il est finaliste au prix de poésie Castello di Duino en Italie, et l'un de ses poèmes est sélectionné dans le cadre de Poetry in Motion, un projet de publication de poésie dans les autobus de Winnipeg. Il membre du comité de rédaction de la revue de poésie Contemporary Verse 2. |
K I Press
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K I (Karen) Press grew up in Edmonton and in the Peace River country of northern Alberta, and has also lived in Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. Her previous publications include two poetry collections, Spine and Pale Red Footprints. Gaspereau has just published a new volume, Types of Canadian Women, Volume II, a quirkily subversive retake on a 1903 illustrated biographical dictionary of society women--Volume I--she encountered in her work as an archival researcher. Telling "just the good parts" produces a collection that's irreverent, generous, painful, and wise. Press has recently moved to Winnipeg. |
Rachael Preston
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A native of Yorkshire, England, Rachael Preston has taught English in Tokyo, Vancouver, London, and the Czech Republic. She now lives in Hamilton, where she teaches creative writing at several nearby universities and colleges, and chairs gritLIT, Hamilton's writers' festival. In 2001, she won the Arts Hamilton Literary Award and was nominated for the Journey Prize. Her acclaimed first novel, Tent of Blue, has just been followed by The Wind Seller (Goose Lane), a story of 20th-century piracy in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion. The Globe and Mail calls it "a literary page-turner, churning with thrilling scenes . . . seamlessly constructed." |
Louise RenÉE (Francais)
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Neé à Winnipeg, Louise Renée est chez elle au milieu des vastes prairies qui, selon ell, "ouvrent l'esprit à l'imaginaire". Docteur en littérature française, elle enseigne à l"Université du Manitoba depuis 1982. Louise Renée a publié plusieurs articles sur divers auteurs et a co-édite un liver sur Simone de Beauvoir (2005). Elle participe activement aux conférences sur le roman contemporain qui on lieu au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe. Tír na n'Org (Terre de la jeunesse éternelle) par aux Éditions du Blé en juin 2006, est son premier roman. |
Leo Brent Robillard
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Leo Brent Robillard's work has appeared in major journals in Canada, the US and Australia. His poetry has been anthologized, and recognized with the George Johnston Poetry Prize. In 2004, he won the Cold Steel Crime and Mystery Award for his novella, The Prodigal Son. His first novel, Leaving Wyoming, was a semi-finalist for the 2005 Re-Lit Award and a Bartley's Top Five selection in The Globe and Mail. His second novel, Houdini's Shadow (Turnstone), sweeps readers into the decadent underworlds of Montreal and New Orleans in the 20s and 30s. Robillard lives in southeastern Ontario with his wife, their two children, and a Bethlehem of animals. |
Eden Robinson
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Eden Robinson, the daughter of a Haisla father and a Heiltsuk (Bella Bella) mother burst into visibility as a writer with Traplines, a collection of stories which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Winifred Holtby Prize. Monkey Beach, her first novel, met with critical acclaim as well, winning the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, BC Book Prize for Fiction, and making the shortlist for the Governor General's Award and the Giller Prize. Her wrenching new novel, Blood Sports (McClelland & Stewart), is set in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. Robinson lives near Kitimat BC. |
Marie Rocque (Francais)
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Marie Rocque est née à Cochenour (Ontario) et vit à Winnipeg. Titulaire d'un baccalauréat en arts et d'un baccalauréat en éducation, elle a aussi terminé un cours d'écriture pour enfants à l'Institute of Children's Literature au Connecticut. Mère de quatre enfants, elle a travaillé dans des garderies, des écoles et des bibliothèques. C'est lors d'un séjour à Churchill et sur la Terre de Baffin que Marie Rocque s'initie à la vie et aux traditions des habitants du Grand-Nord. En 2005 elle publie la deuxième édition du conte Etuk et Piqati (Plaines, 2005). |
Denise Roig
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Denise Roig lives in Montreal where she teaches creative writing and journalism and contributes to publications including the Montreal Gazette. She has traveled extensively, living on a kibbutz, exploring Italy and visiting the republic of Georgia, where she and her husband adopted their daughter. Her first short story collection, A Quiet Night and a Perfect End, was broadcast on CBC Radio's Between the Covers and published in French translation. Her stunning second collection, Any Day Now (Signature Editions), proves her to be "an expert anatomist of the human soul" (Vancouver Sun). Roig is at work on a new book, Butter Cream: A Year in a Montreal Pastry School. |
Ian Ross
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Ian Ross was born in McCreary, Manitoba, and now calls Winnipeg home. His first professional mainstage production, fareWel, won the 1997 Governor General's Award for Drama. His first children's play, Baloney!, about child poverty in Canada, was produced in 1998, and his second play, The Illustrated History of the Anishnawbe People, premiered in 2001. Other plays include The Gap, Bereav'd of Light (Scirocco Drama) and Heart of a Distant Tribe. Ross is also the force behind Joe from Winnipeg, a popular series of comic cultural commentaries on CBC Radio. The most recent Joe from Winnipeg publication is Joe from Winnipeg: All My Best (J Gordon Shillingford). |
Kerry Ryan
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Kerry Ryan lives and writes in a blue house in Winnipeg. Her poems have been published in The Windsor Review, CV2 and The New Quarterly and are forthcoming in Carousel, Grain and Prairie Fire. In 2002, a number of her poems were collected in Exposed, an anthology of Winnipeg women poets, published by The Muses' Company, an imprint of J Gordon Shillingford press. In 2005, she received support from the Winnipeg Arts Council to develop a book-length manuscript of poetry, for which she is currently seeking a publisher. |
Devyani Saltzman
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Devyani Saltzman, daughter of award-winning film maker Deepa Mehta and Canadian producer and director Paul Saltzman, was born in Toronto. She received a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, and works as a photojournalist and freelance writer. Her first book, Shooting Water (Key Porter), chronicles both the controversial filming of Mehta's film Water, the third in her Elements trilogy, and the gradual rebuilding of an estranged mother-daughter relationship. In starred reviews, the Library Journal names it "an essential read" and the Publishers Weekly calls it "a lush, evocative memoir that is emotional but never cloying." Saltzman lives in Toronto. |
Louise-Michelle Sauriol (Francais)
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Orthophoniste de formation, Louise-Michelle Sauriol s'intéresse très tôt à la littérature jeunesse et s'émerveille du pouvoir des contes sur l'expression du langage. Fascinée par les civilisations autochtones, l'histoire, les légendes, elle invente des récits pour jeunes lecteurs sous forme de contes et de romans. Louise-Michelle Sauriol consacre aujourd'hui la majeure partie de son temps à la littérature. Elle a publié Margot et la fièvre de l'or (Plaines, 1997) et, plus récemment, Les aventures du Géant Beaupré (Plaines, 2006). |
Barbara Schott
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Barbara Schott was born and raised in Winnipeg. She studied human ecology and literature at the University, and has always balanced parallel interests in writing and fashion. She was nominated for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writer in 1997, and won second place in the Prairie Fire poetry contest that same year. Brick Books published a collection of her poetry, Memoirs of an Almost Expedition, two years later. She is a poetry editor at Prairie Fire and an avid supporter of arts in the city. Schott lives in Winnipeg, but her work as a fashion designer frequently finds her at 35,000 feet, heading west. |
Ellen Schwartz
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Ellen Schwartz has found a lively and devoted audience with her many titles for young readers. Mr Belinsky's Bagels won the Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice Award in 1999. One of her popular Starshine series, Starshine on TV, was chosen as a Canadian Library Association Notable Book, and Jesse's Star was nominated for the Silver Birch Award, Red Cedar Award, and Chocolate Lily Award, and won a BC Millennium Book Award. This year, she has three new titles: Abby's Birds (Tradewind), a beautiful picture book, and two novels for middle years readers, Yossi's Goal (Orca) and Stealing Home (Tundra). Schwartz lives Burnaby BC. |
Gregory Scofield
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Gregory Scofield is a Métis poet, writer, activist and community worker whose maternal ancestry can be traced back five generations to the Red River Settlement and to Kinesota, Manitoba. He has published several acclaimed books of poetry, as well as the memoir Thunder Through My Veins: Memories of a Métis Childhood, and has garnered both the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Scofield's most recent book, Singing Home the Bones (Raincoast), uses poetry and storytelling to reclaim the untold history of the Métis people and his own biological family--including his mysterious father, who turns out to be Jewish. Scofield and his partner live in Calgary. |
Birk Sproxton
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A prairie bird, Birk Sproxton perches in Red Deer, Alberta, and regularly criss-crosses the prairies. His books include the prize-winning novel, The Red-Headed Woman with the Black Black Heart, a long poem Headframe: , and a best-selling anthology Great Stories from the Prairies. Phantom Lake: North of 54 (U.Alberta), recently won the Grant MacEwan Author Award and the Margaret McWilliams Local History Award. This fall will see two new titles to add to his list. Headframe: 2 (Turnstone) is a new poetry collection; The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Prairie Fire) is a gathering of historical and contemporary essays, articles, and documents he has edited and introduced. |
Walter Swayze
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Dr Walter Swayze served as a Full Professor in the English Department of United College and
the University of Winnipeg from 1953 to 1987, and was awarded Emeritus in 1988. In both his academic and personal life, he has made a significant contribution to the serious study of Canadian literature. His up-close engagement with the literary life of Winnipeg fuels his essay, "Before the Beginning: We Were There," an argument with John Metcalfe's contention that little Canadian writing published before the 60s has any value. The essay appears in The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Prairie Fire Press), a new literary-cultural history edited by Birk Sproxton. |
Sharon Thesen
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Sharon Thesen is a poet, editor, and writer who has recently moved to Kelowna after many years in the Vancouver writing scene. Two of her eight books of poetry--Confabulations and The Beginning of the Long Dash--were nominated for the Governor General's Award, and A Pair of Scissors won the prestigious Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her publishing credits also include an award-winning edition of Phyllis Webb's poetry, two editions of The New Long Poem Anthology, and several years at the helm of The Capelano Review. Her new collection, The Good Bacteria (Anansi), "sparkles with her usual flair for locating the unexpected humor, the surreal in the everyday" (The Globe and Mail). |
Madeleine Thien
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Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver in 1974, the year her parents immigrated to Canada from Tawau, East Malaysia. Her work has appeared in the Journey Prize Anthology and Best Canadian Stories. Her first book of fiction, Simple Recipes, won four awards in Canada, was a finalist for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, and was named a notable book by the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. Alice Munro has remarked on "the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity," and Thien's debut novel, Certainty (McClelland and Stewart), more than confirms that praise. Thien lives in Quebec City. |
Diane Tullson
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Diane Tullson has written four novels for young adult readers, including Saving Jasey and Blue Highway, and all of them have been warmly received by both readers and critics. Her newest book, Red Sea (Orca), a contemporary, true-to-life adventure of piracy in the Red Sea, has been named an American Library Association Best Book and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and been nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award and the ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. Resource Links says: "This is a book that needs to be in every library for readers grade seven and up." Tullson lives in Delta BC. |
Katherena Vermette
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Born and raised in, and now hopelessly addicted to, Winnipeg, Katherena Vermette is a product of our multi-racial country, with roots in the Aboriginal as well as Mennonite communities. An often poet and sometimes fiction writer, her poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire and Juice, as well as in Bone Memory, a compilation of work published by the Aboriginal Writers Collective. She is a recent participant in the Sheldon Oberman Mentorship program at the Manitoba Writers' Guild, and is currently attempting to navigate the unpredictable torrents of fiction--which is to say, working on her first novel. Vermette lives in Winnipeg. |
Rachel Vigier
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Rachel Vigier's work has appeared in journals in Canada and the US, and she has published a book of non-fiction, Gestures of Genius: Women, Dance, and the Body, and two poetry collections. Her poetry and comments were featured on "Loss and Legacy," a CBC Radio special commemorating the events of September 11, and she appears in the anthology, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. Her new release, The Book of Skeletons (Pedlar Press), is a delicate and affecting consideration of the human devastation of 9/11. She was raised on a farm in Manitoba and now lives with her family in New York City. |
Richard Wagamese
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Richard Wagamese, an Ojibway from the Wabasseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario who now lives outside Kamloops BC, made an audience for himself with his popular and award-winning column in The Calgary Herald. Two novels, Keeper'n Me and A Quality of Light, appeared to critical acclaim in the 1990s, and were followed by a memoir, For Joshua. Wagamese's respect for traditional native culture, his willingness to explore his own difficult life in his writing, and his warmth and humor are unmistakably present in his new novel, Dream Wheels (Random House)--along with a passion for the rodeo! |
Fred Wah
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Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and raised in the interior of British Columbia. He has been involved internationally in writing and publishing since the 1960s, and has spent his adult life exploring and teaching poetry and poetics. His many titles include poetry collections, Waiting for Saskatchewan, winner of the Governor General's Award, and So Far, which won the Stephanson Prize for Poetry, and a collection of essays called Faking It. A work of bio-fiction, Diamond Grill, which won the 1996 Howard O'Hagan Prize, has just been re-released by NeWest Press. Wah lives now in Vancouver. |
Jess Walter
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Jess Walter first made his mark as an investigative journalist with the acclaimed Every Knee Shall Bow, which was made into a CBS mini-series. His novels have consistently garnered rave reviews from critics and readers alike: Over Tumbled Graves was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Citizen Vince won the Edgar Award for Best Novel and was named one of the Washington Post's top picks. His new book, The Zero (HarperCollins), is a stunning novel set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Kirkus Reviews calls it a "brilliant tour-de-force that's as heartrending as it is harrowing." Walter lives in Spokane, WA, with his family. |
Gene Walz
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Gene Walz is a writer, filmmaker, professor of Film Studies and erstwhile administrator at the University of Manitoba. He has published books on Françcois Truffaut and Charlie Thorson--the latter won Best Illustrated Book and Best Popular History awards--and edited several books on Canadian film. His film scripts include The Washing Machine (based on a short story by David Arnason) and Birding for Kids, produced for PBS-Television. His essay, "Moviemaking in Manitoba: The World War Two Era," appears in The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Prairie Fire Press), a new literary-cultural history edited by Birk Sproxton. Walz lives in Winnipeg. |
Tricia Wasney
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Tricia Wasney has a background in film, literature, visual art, and landscape architecture, and has recently developed Winnipeg's new public art policy and program through the Winnipeg Arts Council. Several years ago she mentored with Di Brandt through the Manitoba Writers' Guild and has presented her work at conferences, in publications, and at art events. She is interested notions of home, how human experience becomes embedded in landscape, and loss. Her essay, "Making Way: Loss and Transformation in Winnipeg's Urban Landscape--A Miscellaneous Photo Album," appears in The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Prairie Fire Press), a new literary-cultural history edited by Birk Sproxton. Wasney lives in Winnipeg. |
Armin Wiebe
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Armin Wiebe was in attendance at Victor Enns' farm on the day the Manitoba Writers' Guild was founded in 1981 and has served on the boards of the Manitoba Writers' Guild, Prairie Fire, and the Mennonite Literary Society. He established himself with his wildly popular comic Gutenthal novels, The Salvation of Yasch Siemens, Murder in Gutenthal, and The Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst. His most recent novel, Tatsea (Turnstone Press), an adventure story set in Canada's Subarctic in the 1760s, won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. Wiebe teaches in the Creative Communications program at Red River College in Winnipeg. |
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