Donna Milner (September 3, 1946 - November 11, 2021) was a Canadian writer.
Milner was born and raised in Victoria BC. She lived in Williams Lake, British Columbia, with her husband Tom. Donna wrote and published the books After River, ThePromise of Rain, Somewhere in Between, and A Place Called Sorry. She is often referred to as the "Oh, so Canadian author. [1]
Her 2008 book After River is, according to bcbooklook, "about a woman coming to terms with the disintegration of her family some 35 years after a young American draft resister named River crossed the border into Canada and changed their lives". [2] The book had a 4/5 star rating on goodreads.com, from over 1,700 ratings as of October 2021 [update] . [3] By 2015, the book had been published in 12 countries and into 8 languages. [2]
Milner described this book as "the story of a family dealing with loss and tragedy". One of the characters in the book, Virgil Blue, was inspired by a one-time resident of Milner's home city of Williams Lake, British Columbia. [4]
Milner was born in Victoria BC in 1946 and was raised in Vancouver. She moved to Rossland where she married and had children. Having previously worked as a realtor for 25 years, [2] Milner said in a 2014 interview she and her husband had lived in the Cariboo for 40 years. She described that prefers writing in the morning and insists upon herself of writing at least two pages in longhand before she can leave the room. She used to go on writing retreats near Eagle Lake with a friend. [4]
She died on November 11, 2021, after a short battle with cancer. [5]
Her book After River was listed in a top five fiction books list by The Gettysburg Times in 2008, who described it as "beautifully written", [6] while The Promise of Rain was listed in The Globe and Mail top 100 books in 2010. 9. [7]
Brian Brett was a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and novelist. Brett wrote and published extensively, starting in the late 1960s, and he worked as an editor for several publishing firms, including the Governor-General's Award-winning Blackfish Press. He also wrote a three-part memoir of his life in British Columbia.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, serving in the role until 2020.
Helen Humphreys is a Canadian poet and novelist.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Mary Lawson is a Canadian novelist.
Keith Maillard is a Canadian-American novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Canada in 1970 and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.
The Chilcotin War, the Chilcotin Uprising or the Bute Inlet Massacre was a confrontation in 1864 between members of the Tsilhqot'in (Chilcotin) people in British Columbia and white road construction workers. Fourteen men employed by Alfred Waddington in the building of a road from Bute Inlet were killed, as well as a number of men with a pack-train near Anahim Lake and a settler at Puntzi Lake.
Madeline Sonik is a Canadian author.
Cynthia Flood is a Canadian short-story writer and novelist. The daughter of novelist Luella Creighton and historian Donald Creighton, she grew up primarily in Toronto. After attending the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley she spent some years in the United States, where she married Maurice Flood before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1969.
The Concubine's Children: Portrait of a Family Divided is a non-fiction book written by Chinese-Canadian writer Denise Chong, first published in January 1995 by Penguin Books. In the book, the author traces her family's history, giving a narrative account of members from both sides of the ocean. The Concubine's Children is Chong's first book, which she compiled from letters, photographs and memory. The award-winning book has been called an "astonishing tale" written in "clear and unflinching prose".
Shaena Lambert is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Marion Alice Coburn Farrant is a Canadian short fiction writer and journalist. She lives in North Saanich, British Columbia.
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Pamela Paige Porter is a Canadian novelist and poet. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and has also lived in Texas, Louisiana, Washington, and Montana. She emigrated to Canada with her husband Rob Porter, from the fourth generation of a Saskatchewan farm family, and resides in North Saanich, British Columbia. She has received praise for her young adult novels, especially The Crazy Man. Her poetry has won the Prism International Poetry Prize and the Vallum Magazine Poetry Prize, and has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the United States.
Alexandra Shimo is a Canadian writer.
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Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.
Five Little Indians is the debut novel by Cree Canadian writer Michelle Good, published in 2020 by Harper Perennial. The novel focuses on five survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system, struggling to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, British Columbia after the end of their time in the residential schools. It also explores the love and strength that can emerge after trauma.
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