ImagiNation

Mireille Levert

ben — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:24:22 +0000

Mireille Levert, an illustrator of children’s books, won the 1993 Governor General’s Award for her illustrations in Sleep Tight, Mrs. Ming (Annick Press, 1993), the third in a series of books that have garnered her critical acclaim. She was awarded a Diploma of Honor from the Fourth Premi Internacional Catalonia d’illustración in Barcelona, Spain, and a Merit Award from Studio magazine for these illustrations. The other two books in the series, Jerimiah and Mrs. Ming(Annick Press, 1990) and When Jeremiah Found Mrs. Ming (Annick Press, 1992), were finalists for the Governor General’s Award and the Mr. Christie Book Award.

Alistair MacLeod

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:26:26 +0000

Alistair MacLeod was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1936 and raised among an extended family in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He still spends his summers in Inverness County, writing in a clifftop cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island. In his early years, to finance his education he worked as a logger, a miner, and a fisherman, and writes vividly and sympathetically about such work.

He has published two internationally acclaimed collections of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). In 2000, these two books, accompanied by two new stories, were published in a single-volume edition entitled Island: The Collected Stories of Alistair MacLeod. In 1999, MacLeod’s first novel, No Great Mischief, was published to great critical acclaim, and was on national bestseller lists for more than a year. The novel won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Trillium Award for Fiction, the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction, and at the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards, MacLeod won for Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year. No Great Mischief was also a finalist for the Pearson Canada Reader’s Choice Award at The Word on the Street.

Alistair MacLeod and his wife, Anita, have six children. They live in Windsor.

Heather O’Neill

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:25:24 +0000

Heather O’Neill’s debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals (Harper Collins Toronto, New York, 2006), won the 2007 CBC Canada Reads competition and went on to become an international bestseller. This novel won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2007, and was short-listed for a number of awards, including the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008. She has also been selected by Barnes & Noble for their “Discover Great New Writers Campaign”. She appears regularly on the radio show “This American Life” and her work has appeared in the New York Times magazine.

Camilla Gibb

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:22:09 +0000

Camilla Gibb’s first two novels, Mouthing the Words (Pedlar Press, 1999) and The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, (Doubleday Canada, 2002) were selected as the “Best Book of the Year” by the Globe and Mail. Mouthing the Words won the City of Toronto Book Award. In 2001, Gibb was named to the “Orange Futures List”, a list of writers to watch compiled by the jury of the Orange Prize. Gibb’s latest novel, Sweetness in the Belly (Thomson Gale, 2006) was short-listed for the 2005 Giller Prize and long-listed for the 2007 IMPAC Literary Award. It won the 2006 Trillium Award.

Neil Bissoondath

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:21:14 +0000

Neil Bissoondath won the Gordon Montador Award for his work Selling Illusions (Penguin Books, Canada, 1994). Bissondath was awarded the McClelland and Stewart Award for fiction in 1986 and the 1986 National Magazine award for his short story Dancing, part of the collection Digging up the Mountains (Toronto, Macmillan, 1985 and New York, Viking, 1986). He also won the 1993 Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction for his novel The Innocence of Age (Random House Canada, 1992). His novel, Doing the Heart Good (Comorant Books, 2002), won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2002.

Jeffrey Moore

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:19:17 +0000

Jeffery Moore is a freelance translator and lecturer in Translation at the Université de Montréal. He works for museums, theatres, dance companies and film festivals around the world. Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain (Thistledown Press, 1999) was a finalist for the QSPELL Literary Awards and winner of the regional and international Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2000. His second novel, The Memory Artists (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK, 2006, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2004 and Penguin Canada, 2004) won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Best Novel and was short-listed for numerous prizes, among them the Rogers’ Writers Trust Award.

George Elliott Clarke

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:17:16 +0000

George Elliott Clarke is a poet, playwright, literary critic and professor at the University of Toronto. He won the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his poetry collection Execution Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2001). He has won a variety of awards, among them the Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement (1988), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2004) and the prestigious Trudeau Fellow Prize (2005). He has received honorary doctorates from a number of Canadian universities. In 2008, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Karen Connelly

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:01:43 +0000

Karen Connelly is the author of seven books of non-fiction, fiction and poetry, including The Lizard Cage (Random House, Toronto, 2005, New York, 2007). It was nominated for the Kiriyama Prize and long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Award. The book also won Connelly Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers. Connelly won the 1993 Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction for her novel Touch the Dragon (Turnstone Press, 1992) and the Pat Lowther Award for poetry for The Small Words in my Body (Kalmalka Press, 1990).

Karolyn Smardz Frost

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:01:01 +0000

Karolyn Smardz Frost is an archaeologist, historian, university professor, and a bestselling author. Frost has conducted important archaeological research, written a variety of books and in 1985 founded the Toronto Board of Education’s Archaeological Resource Centre. Her book, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: a Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad (Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, 2007 and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2007) won the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, the Heritage Toronto Award of Merit and is on Macleans’ bestseller list. Frost is currently the Research Associate for the York University Centre for Education and Community.

Lawrence Hill

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:58:39 +0000

Lawrence Hill is best known for his novel The Book of Negroes (HarperCollins Canada, 2007), winner of the overall Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ontario Library Association’s Evergreen Award and the 2009 CBC Canada Reads Contest. Hill is also the author of Any Known Blood (William Morrow, New York, 1999 and HarperCollins Canada, 1997) and Some Great Thing (Turnstone Press, Winnipeg, 1992). Hill’s most recent non-fiction book is The Deserter’s Tale: the Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (written with Joshua Key).