Ann-Marie MacDonald | |
---|---|
Born | CFB Baden-Soellingen, West Germany | October 29, 1958
Occupation | Playwright, novelist, actress, broadcast host |
Nationality | Canadian |
Notable works | Goodnight Desdemona Fall on Your Knees The Way the Crow Flies Adult Onset |
Spouse | Alisa Palmer |
Website | |
annmariemacdonald |
Ann-Marie MacDonald OC (born October 29, 1958) is a Canadian playwright, author, actress, and broadcast host who lives in Toronto, Ontario.
MacDonald is the daughter of a member of Canada's military; she was born at an air force base near Baden-Baden, West Germany. She is of partial Lebanese descent through her mother. [1]
MacDonald won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for her first novel, Fall on Your Knees (1996), [2] which was selected for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club in January 2002. [3]
MacDonald received the Governor General's Award for Drama, [4] the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, [5] and the Canadian Authors Association Drama Award [6] for her play, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) .
MacDonald hosted the CBC documentary series Life and Times for seven seasons. MacDonald also hosted CBC's flagship documentary program, Doc Zone for eight seasons.
She appeared in the films I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and Better Than Chocolate , among others.
MacDonald's 2003 novel, The Way the Crow Flies , was partly inspired by the Steven Truscott case. Her third novel Adult Onset was released in 2014 and has been translated into five languages. Her fourth novel Fayne was published in 2022. [7]
She was the inaugural Mordecai Richler Reading Room Writer in Residence at Concordia University, [8] and she coaches students in the Acting and Playwriting Programs at the National Theatre School of Canada.
In 2008, MacDonald was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities by the University of Windsor. [9]
In May 2015, MacDonald was the "big-name author" and "public face" [10] of the inaugural Canadian Authors for Indies Day, organized to bring attention to independent bookstores across the country. Nearly 100 stores and 270 authors participated in the nationwide event. [10]
In December 2018, MacDonald was named as an Officer of the Order of Canada, in recognition of "her multi-faceted contributions to the arts in Canada and for her advocacy of LGBTQ+ and women's rights". [11]
In 2019, MacDonald was diagnosed with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis, which affected every aspect of her life, including work. She finished her novel Fayne while strapped to a chair in order to be able to type. Her illness caused the novel's completion to be delayed by a year. As of 2023, she is symptom-free. [12] [13]
MacDonald is married to the Canadian playwright and theatre director Alisa Palmer. [14] [15]
Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
Donald Lamont Jack was an English and Canadian novelist and playwright.
Daniel Richler is a Canadian arts and pop culture broadcaster and writer.
Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. This subsequently led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996). She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Guinevere (1999), Go (1999), The Weight of Water (2000), No Such Thing (2001), My Life Without Me (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Splice (2009), and Mr. Nobody (2009).
Sook-Yin Lee is a Canadian broadcaster, musician, film director, actress and multimedia artist. She is a former MuchMusic VJ and a former radio host on CBC Radio. She has appeared in films, notably in the John Cameron Mitchell movie Shortbus.
Life and Times was a series of biographical documentary films broadcast by CBC Television, CBC Country Canada and CBC Newsworld. The program premiered in 1996, and ran until 2007.
Fall on Your Knees is a 1996 novel by Canadian playwright, actor and novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald. The novel takes place in late 19th and early 20th centuries and chronicles four generations of the complex Piper Family. It is a story of "inescapable family bonds, terrible secrets, and of miracles". Beginning in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia through the battlefields of World War I and ending in New York City, the troubled Piper sisters depend on one another for survival.
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a 1988 comedic play by Ann-Marie MacDonald in which Constance Ledbelly, a young English literature professor from Queen's University, goes on a subconscious journey of self-discovery.
Alisa Palmer is a Canadian theatre director and playwright. She was the artistic director of Nightwood Theatre from 1993 to 2001. Palmer served as the artistic director of the English section of the National Theatre School of Canada for eleven years, departing the school in 2024.
Where the Spirit Lives is a 1989 television film about Aboriginal children in Canada being taken from their tribes to attend residential schools for assimilation into majority culture. Written by Keith Ross Leckie and directed by Bruce Pittman, it aired on CBC Television on October 29, 1989. It was also shown in the United States on PBS on June 6, 1990, as part of the American Playhouse series and was screened at multiple film festivals in Canada and the United States.
Jacob Two-Two is a series of children's books written by Canadian author Mordecai Richler: Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1975), Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur (1987) and Jacob Two-Two's First Spy Case (1995) written by Mordecai Richler, and Jacob Two-Two on the High Seas (2009) written by Cary Fagan.
Nightwood Theatre is Canada's oldest professional women's theatre and is based in Toronto. It was founded in 1979 by Cynthia Grant, Kim Renders, Mary Vingoe, and Maureen White and was originally a collective. Though it was not the founders' original intention, Nightwood Theatre has become known for producing feminist works. Some of Nightwood's most famous productions include This is For You, Anna (1983) and Good Night Desdemona (1988). Nightwood hosts several annual events including FemCab, the Hysteria Festival, and Groundswell Festival which features readings from participants of Nightwood's Write from the Hip playwright development program.
Tamara Bernier Evans is a Canadian actress, musician, producer and director.
Nigredo Hotel is a chamber opera in one act composed by Nic Gotham to a libretto by Ann-Marie MacDonald. It premiered on 13 May 1992 at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in a production by Tapestry New Opera Works who had commissioned the opera. The production won two Dora Awards and the work was nominated for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award. Subtitled "an operatic thriller", it is set in Room 7 of a run-down hotel which takes its name from the Jungian concept of Nigredo or "dark night of the soul". The story involves an encounter between the beautiful but crazed woman who runs the hotel and a brain surgeon forced to take refuge there after crashing his car.
Nicholas Ivor Gotham, known as Nic Gotham, was a Canadian jazz saxophonist and composer. His 1992 chamber opera, Nigredo Hotel, won two Dora Awards and was nominated for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.
Baņuta Rubess is a Latvian-Canadian theatre director and playwright. She co-wrote This is For You, Anna as a member of the Anna Project. Rubess was a co-recipient of the 1988 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award for children's theatre for her play Thin Ice.
Adult Onset is a 2014 novel by Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald. Set in The Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, the story centers on one week in the life of a successful writer of young adult fiction, Mary Rose MacKinnon, who finds herself taking care of her two young children while her wife is out of town directing a play. The novel starts with a light tone in describing Mary Rose's new-found solo daily domesticity with her son and daughter. But through a series of flashbacks, "Mister" or "MR" as Mary Rose is known to family and friends, is forced to confront her own repressed abuse as a child. At the center of the family drama is her mother, Dolly, an immigrant child-wife in postwar Canada.
Beverley Cooper is a Canadian actor, director, dramaturg, and playwright who works in film, radio, television, and theatre.
Tanja Jacobs is a Belgian-born Canadian actress and theatre director. She originated the role of Constance Ledbelly in Anne-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona.