K.R. Byggdin | |
---|---|
Occupation | novelist |
Nationality | Canadian |
Period | 2020s–present |
Notable works | Wonder World |
Website | |
krbyggdin |
K.R. Byggdin (born 1991) is a Canadian novelist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. [1]
Byggdin began publishing short fiction in 2018, with publications in The Antigonish Review , Grain , and others.
Their debut novel, Wonder World, was published by Enfield & Wizenty (Great Plains Press) in 2022. [2] The novel tells the story of a 27-year-old pansexual Mennonite man named Isaac Funk who returns to his small Manitoba town after years on the East Coast. [3]
Wonder World won the Thomas Head Raddall Award at the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards, [4] and was a finalist for the 2023 ReLit Award for fiction. [5]
Byggdin grew up in Niverville, Manitoba, where they attended a Mennonite church and due to their close contact with Mennonite communities, jokes that they are "Mennonite by osmosis." [6] They began to pursue writing as a career after being exposed to the writing of Miriam Toews by the town's mayor, while working in a summer job for the town government. [6]
Byggdin studied creative writing at Dalhousie University. [7]
Sandra Louise Birdsell, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Métis and Mennonite heritage from Morris, Manitoba.
Steinbach is the third-largest city in the province of Manitoba, Canada, and with a population of 17,806, the largest community in the Eastman region. The city, located about 58 km (36 mi) southeast of the provincial capital of Winnipeg, is bordered by the Rural Municipality of Hanover to the north, west, and south, and the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie to the east. Steinbach was first settled by Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine in 1874, whose descendants continue to have a significant presence in the city today. Steinbach is found on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, while Sandilands Provincial Forest is a short distance east of the city.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
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