 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.(September 2009) |
Alison Wearing (born 1967) is a Canadian writer and performer.
| | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.(September 2009) |
Alison Wearing (born 1967) is a Canadian writer and performer.
Wearing was born in Peterborough, Ontario in 1967. Her mother and father were both pianists and Wearing speaks of music as her "mother tongue". [1] Wearing's father, Joseph Wearing, was also a professor of Political Studies at Trent University. Alison Wearing left high school in Canada to study French at the University of Nantes. She returned to Canada to study music at the University of Western Ontario, then political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Marburg, Germany.
Writer Alison Wearing's writing career began with articles and stories written while living in Prague, where she taught English to members of Václav Havel's first post-revolutionary government of Czechoslovakia. Her first short story, Notes From Under Water, was published first in the Queen's Quarterly and then selected for the Journey Prize Anthology (McClelland and Stewart, 1994). Staring Down the Beast, a longform essay about travels in Serbia during the Balkan War, won the 1994 Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Travel Writing. [2] Solitary Motion, an essay about travels in northwestern China, won the 1995 Western Canada Magazine Award 1st Prize, also for Travel Writing.
Wearing's first book was the internationally acclaimed travel memoir, Honeymoon in Purdah (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2000), her account of a trip to Iran. [3] The Calgary Sun called it "the perfect travel memoir" and the Ottawa Citizen hailed it as "one of the best pieces of travel writing it has been my privilege to read in this, or any, millennium." The book was published in seven countries.
After moving to central Mexico in 2002, Wearing turned her attention to the performing arts, singing, recording and touring with world/folk musician Jarmo Jalava, and studying dance and choreography. Her first solo play, Giving Into Light, combines literary chronicles with music and dance. It toured Canadian Fringe Festivals, where it won two Best of Fest awards, Best Drama, and was a finalist for Best Fringe Production of 2012 (CBC/CTV/CVV). [4]
Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter, is both a memoir (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2013) and a solo play. Autobiographical in nature, Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter tells the story of growing up with a gay father in Peterborough, Canada, in the 1980s. [3] [5] The memoir was nominated for the RBC/Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction, and named one of the Top 50 Books of 2013 by Indigo Books. [6] [7] [8]
Moments of Glad Grace (ECW Press) was published in 2020. “This is a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence. It’s about a daughter and her ageing father, it’s about genealogy and identity, it’s about Ireland, but actually it’s about how we love the ones we love. Moments of Glad Grace is a travelogue of the heart. It’s a road you’ll want to travel.” Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi.
Literature:
2014: Shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
2014: Nominated for the RBC/Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction
2013: Top 50 Books of 2013, Indigo Books
1998: Western Canada Magazine Award 1st Prize
1995: National Magazine Award Gold Medal
1994: Finalist, Journey Prize
Theatre:
2015: Audience Choice Award, Nanaimo Festival
2013: Best Dramatic Script, United Solo Festival, New York City
2013: Critics' Choice Finalist, Vancouver Fringe Festival
2013: Best Drama, Victoria Fringe Festival
2013: Pick of the Fringe, Winnipeg Fringe Festival
2013: Outstanding Solo Show, CBC Manitoba
2012: Best of Fest, Stratford Springworks Festival
2012: Critics' Choice Finalist: Best Fringe Production of 2012
2012: Best of Fest, Fringetastic Festival
2011: Best of Fest, Wakefield Fringe Festival
2011: Best Drama, Victoria Fringe Festival
2010: Best of Fest, Wakefield Fringe Festival
William Stener Ferguson is a Canadian travel writer and novelist who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel 419.
The RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by the Writers' Trust of Canada to a writer who has not yet published his or her first book. Formerly restricted to writers under age 35, the age limit was removed in 2021, with the prize now open to emerging writers regardless of age.
The RBC Taylor Prize (2000–2020), formerly known as the Charles Taylor Prize, is a Canadian literary award, presented by the Charles Taylor Foundation to the best Canadian work of literary non-fiction. It is named for Charles P. B. Taylor, a noted Canadian historian and writer. The 2020 prize will be the final year after which the prize will be concluded. The prize was inaugurated in 2000, and was presented biennially until 2004. At the 2004 awards ceremony, it was announced that the Charles Taylor Prize would become an annual award. The award has a monetary value of $30,000.
Grant Lawrence is a Canadian broadcaster, musician and writer based in Vancouver, primarily associated with CBC Music and CBC Radio 3. Lawrence was also the vocalist for the indie rock group The Smugglers.
Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Alison Pick is a Canadian writer. She is most noted for her Booker Prize-nominated novel Far to Go, and was a winner of the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer in Canada under 35.
Edna Staebler, was a Canadian writer and award-winning literary journalist, best known for her series of cookbooks, particularly Food That Really Schmecks which is currently available in e-book form. While the book contains Mennonite recipes, the content also includes stories and anecdotes about life and home cooking in the rural areas of the Waterloo Region.
Russell Wangersky is a Canadian journalist and award-winning writer of creative non-fiction. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Canada since the age of three, Wangersky was educated at Acadia University. He has been page editor of The Telegram in St. John's, as well as a columnist and magazine writer.
The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is an annual literary award recognizing the previous year's best creative nonfiction book with a "Canadian locale and/or significance" that is a Canadian writer's "first or second published book of any type or genre". It was established by an endowment from Edna Staebler, a literary journalist best known for cookbooks, and was inaugurated in 1991 for publication year 1990. The award is administered by Wilfrid Laurier University's Faculty of Arts. Only submitted books are considered.
Alison Watt is a Canadian writer, and painter born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Watt grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. She studied biology (BSC) at Simon Fraser University and Creative Writing (MFA) at the University of British Columbia. She has worked as Education Coordinator at the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, a tour leader in Central and South America, and a naturalist aboard the west coast schooner Maple Leaf, sailing among British Columbia's Gulf Islands, Haida Gwaii, the Great Bear Rainforest, and Alaska. She has taught art to adults since 1995, in her studio on Protection Island, Nanaimo, BC, in other venues. Since 2020 she has offered courses online, through her business ARTWORK ARTPLAY.
The New Quarterly is a literary magazine based in Waterloo, Ontario that publishes short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction from emerging and established Canadian writers.
Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art is a non-fiction book, written by Canadian writer Joshua Knelman, first published in September 2011 by Douglas & McIntyre. In the book, the author chronicles his four-year investigation into the world of international art theft. Knelman traveled from Cairo to New York City, London, Montreal, and Los Angeles compiling his book; which has been called "A major work of investigative journalism", and "a globetrotting mystery filled with cunning and eccentric characters."
Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery is a non-fiction memoir, written by Canadian writer Helen Waldstein Wilkes, first published in December 2009 by Athabasca University Press. In the book, the author chronicles her discoveries after reading a box of letters she had never before seen. Her Jewish parents had fled Czechoslovakia in April 1939 to seek haven in Canada. Once in place, they corresponded with family and friends, encouraging them to escape the mounting peril that Hitler had envisioned as the Final Solution. Wilkes would learn that shortly after her parents migration, the ability to flee had been curtailed; and that each letter, compounded the historical anguish the writers were forced to endure.
A Very Capable Life: The Autobiography of Zarah Petri is a non-fiction memoir of his mother by the Canadian television host Johnnie Walters, written under his real name John Leigh Walters and published in January 2010 by Athabasca University Press. It re-tells the stories his mother described to him regarding her immigration to Canada in the 1920s. Walters gives his first person account using humor, and intrigue, to share his mother's expressed regards about her depression era experiences.
The Last Island: A Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island is a non-fiction memoir, written by Canadian writer Alison Watt, first published in September 2002 by Harbour Publishing. In the book, the author chronicles her return to Triangle Island, a bird sanctuary off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Watt spent four months studying tufted puffins with her mentor Anne Vallee, returning 16 years later after Vallee's death. The Last Island is written in "beautiful language combined with watercolour paintings" with the power to "transport the reader to the island".
I'll Tell You a Secret: a Memory of Seven Summers is a non-fiction memoir, written by Canadian writer Anne Coleman, first published in September 2004 by McClelland & Stewart. In the book, the author offers her perspective of Hugh MacLennan, her mentor and well known Canadian literary figure. The voice is described as "uncompromising, perceptive and rich with reflection." Kathryn Wardropper, administrator of the Edna Staebler Award said, "The judges were thrilled with her writing and Edna, herself, was a strong champion of this title."
Ashley Little is a Canadian author of both adult and young adult literature.
Arno Kopecky is a Canadian journalist and travel writer. His book The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway won the 2014 Edna Staebler Award, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2014 Governor General's Awards.
Kate Harris is a Canadian author.
Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine is an autobiographical book by Canadian doctor James Maskalyk about his work and reflections on working in emergency departments in St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada, and Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as work in Cambodia and Bolivia.
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