Leon Rooke

Last updated August 21, 2025

Leon Rooke
Rooke at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 2013
Born	(1934-09-11) September 11, 1934 (age 90)
Notable awards	Order of Canada
Website
www.leonrooke.ca

Leon Rooke, CM (born September 11, 1934) is a Canadian novelist. He was born in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina in the United States. Educated at the University of North Carolina, he moved to Canada in 1969. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Bibliography
Novels
Short story collections
Poetry
References
External links

Rooke helped to found the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 1989.^[1] In 2002, Rooke championed The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence in that year's edition of Canada Reads . Rooke's work also appears in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

In 2007, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.^[2]

Bibliography

Novels

Fat Woman (1980) — nominated for a Governor General's Award
Shakespeare's Dog (1983) — winner of the 1983 Governor General's Award for Fiction
A Good Baby (1989)
Who Goes There (1998)
The Fall of Gravity (2000)
The Beautiful Wife (2005)

Short story collections

Approximately 350 short stories published.

Last One Home Sleeps in the Yellow Bed (1968)
Vault (1973)
The Love Parlour (1977)
The Broad Back of the Angel (1977)
Cry Evil (1980)
Death Suite (1981)
The Birth Control King of the Upper Volta (1982)
Sing Me No Love Songs, I'll Say You No Prayers: Selected Stories (1984)
A Bolt of White Cloth (1984)
How I Saved the Province (1989)
The Happiness of Others (1991)
Who Do You Love (1992)
Art. Three Fictions in Prose (1997)
Oh! Twenty-Seven Stories (1997)
Painting the Dog: The Best Stories of Leon Rooke (2001)
Hitting the Charts: Selected Stories (2006)
The Last Shot: Eleven Stories and a Novella (2009)
Swinging Through Dixie (2016)
Fabulous Fictions and Peculiar Practices, with Tony Calzetta (2016)

Poetry

Hot Poppies (2005)
The April Poems (2013)

References

↑ "Artist Bios | Eden Mills Writer's Festival". Archived from the original on 2017-12-07. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
↑ Order of Canada citation (archived)

External links

v t e Winners of the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction
1930s	Bertram Brooker, Think of the Earth (1936) Laura Salverson, The Dark Weaver (1937) Gwethalyn Graham, Swiss Sonata (1938) Franklin D. McDowell, The Champlain Road (1939)
1940s	Ringuet, Thirty Acres (1940) Alan Sullivan, Three Came to Ville Marie (1941) G. Herbert Sallans, Little Man (1942) Thomas Head Raddall, The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek (1943) Gwethalyn Graham, Earth and High Heaven (1944) Hugh MacLennan, Two Solitudes (1945) Winifred Bambrick, Continental Revue (1946) Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute (1947) Hugh MacLennan, The Precipice (1948) Philip Child, Mr. Ames Against Time (1949)
1950s	Germaine Guèvremont, The Outlander (1950) Morley Callaghan, The Loved and the Lost (1951) David Walker, The Pillar (1952) David Walker, Digby (1953) Igor Gouzenko, The Fall of a Titan (1954) Lionel Shapiro, The Sixth of June (1955) Adele Wiseman, The Sacrifice (1956) Gabrielle Roy, Street of Riches (1957) Colin McDougall, Execution (1958) Hugh MacLennan, The Watch That Ends the Night (1959)
1960s	Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960) Malcolm Lowry, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961) Kildare Dobbs, Running to Paradise (1962) Hugh Garner, Hugh Garner's Best Stories (1963) Douglas LePan, The Deserter (1964) [no award] (1965) Margaret Laurence, A Jest of God (1966) [no award] (1967) Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) Robert Kroetsch, The Studhorse Man (1969)
1970s	Dave Godfrey, The New Ancestors (1970) Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman (1971) Robertson Davies, The Manticore (1972) Rudy Wiebe, The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) Margaret Laurence, The Diviners (1974) Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection (1975) Marian Engel, Bear (1976) Timothy Findley, The Wars (1977) Alice Munro, Who Do You Think You Are? (1978) Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (1979)
1980s	George Bowering, Burning Water (1980) Mavis Gallant, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981) Guy Vanderhaeghe, Man Descending (1982) Leon Rooke, Shakespeare's Dog (1983) Josef Škvorecký, The Engineer of Human Souls (1984) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1985) Alice Munro, The Progress of Love (1986) M. T. Kelly, A Dream Like Mine (1987) David Adams Richards, Nights Below Station Street (1988) Paul Quarrington, Whale Music (1989)
1990s	Nino Ricci, Lives of the Saints (1990) Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (1991) Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (1992) Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (1993) Rudy Wiebe, A Discovery of Strangers (1994) Greg Hollingshead, The Roaring Girl (1995) Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman's Boy (1996) Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter (1997) Diane Schoemperlen, Forms of Devotion (1998) Matt Cohen, Elizabeth and After (1999)
2000s	Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost (2000) Richard B. Wright, Clara Callan (2001) Gloria Sawai, A Song for Nettie Johnson (2002) Douglas Glover, Elle (2003) Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness (2004) David Gilmour, A Perfect Night to Go to China (2005) Peter Behrens, The Law of Dreams (2006) Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero (2007) Nino Ricci, The Origin of Species (2008) Kate Pullinger, The Mistress of Nothing (2009)
2010s	Dianne Warren, Cool Water (2010) Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (2011) Linda Spalding, The Purchase (2012) Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (2013) Thomas King, The Back of the Turtle (2014) Guy Vanderhaeghe, Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (2015) Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016) Joel Thomas Hynes, We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (2017) Sarah Henstra, The Red Word (2018) Joan Thomas, Five Wives (2019)
2020s	Michelle Good, Five Little Indians (2020) Norma Dunning, Tainna (2021) Sheila Heti, Pure Colour (2022) Anuja Varghese, Chrysalis (2023) Jordan Abel, Empty Spaces (2024)

Authority control databases
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Other	IdRef SNAC Yale LUX

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