Guy Vanderhaeghe

Last updated
Guy Vanderhaeghe
BornGuy Clarence Vanderhaeghe
(1951-04-05) April 5, 1951 (age 72)
Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, Canada
OccupationNovelist
NationalityCanadian
Alma mater University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina
Period1977 to present
Genre Historical fiction, western fiction, short story
Notable works The Englishman's Boy , The Last Crossing , Man Descending

Guy Clarence Vanderhaeghe OC SOM (born April 5, 1951) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, best known for his Western novel trilogy, The Englishman's Boy , The Last Crossing , and A Good Man set in the 19th-century American and Canadian West. Vanderhaeghe has won three Governor General's Awards for his fiction, one for his short story collection Man Descending in 1982, the second for his novel The Englishman's Boy in 1996, and the third for his short story collection Daddy Lenin and Other Stories in 2015.

Contents

Life and career

Guy Vanderhaeghe was born on April 5, 1951, in Esterhazy, a mining town in southeastern Saskatchewan. [1] He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with great distinction in 1971, High Honours in History in 1972 and Master of Arts in History in 1975, all from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1978 he received his Bachelor of Education with great distinction from the University of Regina. In 1973 he was Research Officer, Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan and, from 1974 until 1977, he worked as Archival and Library Assistant at the university.

From 1975 to 1977 he was a freelance writer and editor and in 1978 and 1979 taught English and history at Herbert High School in Herbert, Saskatchewan. In 1983 and 1984 he was Writer-in-Residence with the Saskatoon Public Library and in 1985 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa. He has been a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa (1985–86), faculty member of the Writing Program of the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990–91), faculty member in charge of senior fiction students in the SAGE Hills Creative Writing Program (1992). Since 1993, he has served as a visiting professor of English at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.

Vanderhaeghe's first book, Man Descending (1982), was winner of a Governor General's Award and the United Kingdom's Faber Prize. A novel, The Englishman's Boy (1996), won him a second Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and for Best Book of the Year, and it was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. [1]

The Last Crossing (2002) was a national bestseller and winner of the Saskatoon Book Award, the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Book of the Year, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year. The novel was selected for the 2004 edition of Canada Reads as the book that should be read by all Canadians.

In 2003, Vanderhaeghe was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His 2011 publication of A Good Man finished off his Western trilogy. "Historically spot on, the characters (fictional and real) are incredible, and the plot builds to an incredible bitter sweet ending." [2]

In 2013, he received the Lieutenant Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Saskatchewan's highest honour in the arts. [3]

Vanderhaeghe currently lives in Saskatoon. He teaches creative writing as an evening class at St. Thomas Moore College at the University of Saskatchewan. [4] His wife Margaret Elizabeth Vanderhaeghe, a noted artist, [5] died in 2012. [6]

His short story collection Daddy Lenin and Other Stories was published in 2015, [7] and won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2015 Governor General's Awards. [8] His first novel in almost a decade was published in 2021, titled August Into Winter. Set in 1939 in a small prairie town, with a narcissistic man-child on the lam with a scrappy 12-year-old child/lover in tow and a trio of hardened lawmen on his trail.

Bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

Plays

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Urquhart</span> Canadian novelist and poet

Jane Urquhart, LL.D is a Canadian novelist and poet. She is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories. As a novelist, Urquhart is well known for her evocative style which blends history with the present day. Her first novel, The Whirlpool, gained her international recognition when she became the first Canadian to win France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Her subsequent novels were even more successful. Away, published in 1993, won the Trillium Award and was a national bestseller. In 1997, her fourth novel, The Underpainter, won the Governor General's Literary Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Ondaatje</span> Canadian novelist and poet

Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker.

Sandra Louise Birdsell, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Métis and Mennonite heritage from Morris, Manitoba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austin Clarke (novelist)</span> Barbadian writer (1934–2016)

Austin Ardinel Chesterfield "Tom" Clarke,, was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and short story writer who was based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Among his notable books are novels such as The Polished Hoe (2002), memoirs including Membering (2015), and two collections of poetry, Where the Sun Shines Best (2013) and In Your Crib (2015).

Myrna Kostash is a Canadian writer and journalist. She has published several non-fiction books and written for many Canadian magazines including Chatelaine. Of Ukrainian descent, she was born in Edmonton, Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

Patrick Lane was a Canadian poet. He had written in several other genres, including essays, short stories, and was the author of the novel Red Dog, Red Dog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudy Wiebe</span> Canadian author and academic

Rudy Henry Wiebe is a Canadian author and professor emeritus in the department of English at the University of Alberta since 1992. Rudy Wiebe was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in the year 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al Purdy</span>

Alfred Wellington Purdy was a 20th-century Canadian free verse poet. Purdy's writing career spanned fifty-six years. His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence, in addition to his posthumous works. He has been called the nation's "unofficial poet laureate" and "a national poet in a way that you only find occasionally in the life of a culture."

Marjorie May "Maggie" Siggins is a Canadian journalist and writer. She was a recipient of the 1992 Governor General's Award for Literary Merit for her non-fiction work Revenge of the Land: A Century of Greed, Tragedy and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm. She was also the recipient of the 1986 Arthur Ellis Award for "Best true crime book" for her work A Canadian Tragedy, about the involvement of former Saskatchewan politician Colin Thatcher in the murder of his wife JoAnn Wilson. The book was later adapted into the television miniseries Love and Hate: The Story of Colin and JoAnn Thatcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Hay (novelist)</span> Canadian novelist and short story writer (born 1951)

Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.

Annabel Lyon is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She has published two collections of short fiction, two young adult novels, and two adult historical novels, The Golden Mean and its sequel, The Sweet Girl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Thien</span> Canadian short story writer 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.

Anne Simpson is a Canadian poet, novelist, artist and essayist. She was a recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Trevor Cole is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He has published five novels; the first two, Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life (2004) and The Fearsome Particles (2006), were nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

<i>Man Descending</i> Collection of short stories by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Man Descending is a collection of short stories written by Saskatchewan-born writer Guy Vanderhaeghe. The book was first published by Macmillan of Canada in 1982 and Vanderhaeghe went on to become one of the few first-time authors to win the coveted Governor General's Award for Fiction for this work. It also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

<i>The Englishmans Boy</i> 1996 novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Englishman's Boy is a novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe, published in 1996 by McClelland and Stewart, which won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1996 and was nominated for the Giller Prize. It deals with the events of the Cypress Hills Massacre (1873) as told 50 years later to a young screenwriter in Hollywood by the last living survivor.

Douglas Maitland Gibson,C.M. is a Canadian editor, publisher and writer. Best known as the former president and publisher of McClelland and Stewart, he was particularly noted for his professional relationships with many of Canada's most prominent and famous writers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yann Martel</span> Canadian novelist

Yann Martel, is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Christie (writer)</span> Canadian writer

Michael Christie is a Canadian writer, whose debut story collection The Beggar's Garden was a longlisted nominee for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize and a shortlisted nominee for the 2011 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Jill Robinson</span> Canadian writer, editor and teacher (born 1955)

Jacqueline Jill Robinson is a Canadian writer and editor. She is the author of a novel and four collections of short stories. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals including Geist, the Antigonish Review, Event, Prairie Fire and the Windsor Review. Her novel, More In Anger, published in 2012, tells the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters who bear the emotional scars of loveless marriages, corrosive anger and misogyny.

References

Further reading