Alix Ohlin

Last updated

Alix Ohlin
Alix Ohlin 2019 Texas Book Festival.jpg
Ohlin in 2019
Born Montreal, Quebec, Canada
OccupationWriter
Period2000s-present
Notable worksInside
Website
alixohlinauthor.com

Alix Ohlin is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a recipient of the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature for her short story collection, We Want What We Want. [1]

Contents

Biography

On January 1, 2018, Ohlin became the chair of the University of British Columbia's creative writing program. In addition to her appointment as chair, Ohlin also joined the program as an associate professor where she specializes in teaching fiction, screenwriting, and environmental writing, as well as serving as a mentor to younger writers. [2]

Most recently, Ohlin taught at McGill University as the Mordecai Richler Writer-in-Residence for 2016–17. Ohlin was previously an English professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, a faculty member in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. [3] in North Carolina, and has taught writing at the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She taught and worked at Portsmouth Abbey School, in Rhode Island, as writer-in-residence from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2004.

Ohlin graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an English and American Literature and Language degree in 1992 and earned a master's in fine arts degree in writing from the Michener Center for Writers, University of Texas at Austin in 2001. [2]

Ohlin published her debut novel The Missing Person in 2006, and followed up with the short story collection Babylon and Other Stories in 2007. Her second novel, Inside, and her second short story collection, Signs and Wonders, were both published on the same day in 2012. [4] Inside was a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. [5]

Her newest novel, Dual Citizens, was published in 2019. [6] It was shortlisted for the 2019 Giller Prize, [7] the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, [8] and the 2020 ReLit Award for fiction. [9]

Her short story collection We Want What We Want received the Lambda Literary Award for bisexual fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, [10] and the 2022 ReLit Award for short fiction. [11]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections
Stories
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
Quarantine2017Ohlin, Alix (30 January 2017). "Quarantine". The New Yorker. 92 (47): 56–63.

Awards

YearTitleAwardResultRef.
2012Inside Giller Prize Shortlist [12] [13] [14]
Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Shortlist [15]
2019Dual Citizens Giller Prize Shortlist [16]
Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Shortlist [17]
2021We Want What We Want Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Shortlist [18]
2022 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction Winner [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giller Prize</span> Canadian literary award

The Giller Prize, is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.

The Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, formerly known as the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, is a Canadian literary award presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada after an annual juried competition of works submitted by publishers. Alongside the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Giller Prize, it is considered one of the three main awards for Canadian fiction in English. Its eligibility criteria allow for it to garland collections of short stories as well as novels; works that were originally written and published in French are also eligible for the award when they appear in English translation.

André Alexis is a Canadian writer who grew up in Ottawa and lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has received numerous prizes including the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bergen</span> Canadian writer

David Bergen is a Canadian novelist. He has published eleven novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020, making the long list in 2008.

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

Michael Crummey is a Canadian poet and a writer of historical fiction. His writing often draws on the history and landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rawi Hage</span> Lebanese-Canadian journalist, novelist, and photographer

Rawi Hage is a Lebanese-Canadian journalist, novelist, and photographer based in Canada.

Russell Wangersky is a Canadian journalist and writer of creative non-fiction. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Canada since the age of three, Wangersky was educated at Acadia University. He has been page editor of The Telegram in St. John's, as well as a columnist and magazine writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren B. Davis</span> Canadian-born author

Lauren B. Davis is a Canadian writer. She is best known for her novels Our Daily Bread, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe. and The Empty Room, a semi-autobiographical novel about alcoholism. She currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband, Ron Davis and their dog, Bailey The Rescuepoo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather O'Neill</span> Canadian writer (b. 1973)

Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.

The ReLit Awards are Canadian literary prizes awarded annually to book-length works in the novel, short-story and poetry categories. Founded in 2000 by Newfoundland filmmaker and author Kenneth J. Harvey.

Ian Williams is a Canadian poet and fiction writer. His collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and his debut novel, Reproduction, was awarded the 2019 Giller Prize. His work has ben shortlisted for various awards, as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esi Edugyan</span> Canadian novelist (born 1978)

Esi Edugyan is a Canadian novelist. She has twice won the Giller Prize, for her novels Half-Blood Blues (2011) and Washington Black (2018).

<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">Kamal Al-Solaylee</span> Canadian journalist (born 1964)

Kamal Al-Solaylee is a Canadian journalist, who published his debut book, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, in 2012. He is currently director of the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at Canada's University of British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alix Hawley</span> Canadian novelist and short-story writer (born 1975)

Alix Hawley is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Her novel, All True Not a Lie In It, won the amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2015.

Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.

Alex Leslie is a Canadian writer, who won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers from the Writers Trust of Canada in 2015. Leslie's work has won a National Magazine Award, the CBC Literary Award for fiction, the Western Canadian Jewish Book Award and has been shortlisted for the BC Book Prize for fiction and the Kobzar Prize for contributions to Ukrainian Canadian culture, as one of the prize's only Jewish nominees.

Norma Dunning is an Inuk Canadian writer and assistant lecturer at the University of Alberta, who won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award in 2018 for her short story collection Annie Muktuk and Other Stories. In the same year, she won the Writers' Guild of Alberta's Howard O'Hagan Award for the short story "Elipsee", and was a shortlisted finalist for the City of Edmonton Book Award. She published in 2020 a collection of poetry and stories entitled Eskimo Pie: A Poetics of Inuit Identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zalika Reid-Benta</span> Canadian writer

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer, whose debut short story collection Frying Plantain has been nominated and won numerous awards. The book is a collection of linked short stories centering on the coming of age of Kara Davis, a young Jamaican-Canadian girl growing up in the Eglinton West neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario.

Francesca Ekwuyasi is a Nigerian-Canadian writer and artist. She is most noted for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread, which was published in 2020.

References

  1. "2022 Winners". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Alix Ohlin named new chair of creative writing program". UBC News. 20 June 2017. Retrieved 6 July 2017.
  3. Dean Bakopoulos, "On Not Letting Go: An Interview with Alix Ohlin". Fiction Writers Review, 30 July 2012.
  4. "Montreal-born novelist Alix Ohlin goes deep Inside" Archived 12 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Calgary Herald , 10 August 2012.
  5. "Scotiabank Giller Prize short list announced". Toronto Star , 1 October 2012.
  6. "28 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in spring 2019". CBC Books, January 25, 2019.
  7. Deborah Dundas, "Michael Crummey, Ian Williams are in, Margaret Atwood and André Alexis are out on Giller Prize short list". Toronto Star , September 30, 2019.
  8. "André Alexis, Michael Crummey shortlisted for $50K Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize". CBC Books, September 24, 2019.
  9. "38 books shortlisted for 2020 ReLit Awards". CBC Books, April 27, 2021.
  10. Deborah Dundas, "‘May the force be with you’: Five finalists for the first Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize announced". Toronto Star , September 29, 2021.
  11. "Short fiction from Norma Dunning, David Huebert, Alix Ohlin among works shortlisted for 2022 ReLit Awards". CBC Books, May 9, 2022.
  12. "Awards: Scotiabank Giller; Governor General's". Shelf Awareness. 9 October 2012. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  13. Truax, Emma. "2012 Finalists". Scotiabank Giller Prize. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  14. Irish, Paul (1 October 2012). "Scotiabank Giller Prize short list announced". The Toronto Star. ISSN   0319-0781 . Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  15. Medley, Mark (11 July 2012). "Tamas Dobozy wins Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Siege 13". National Post. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  16. "Awards: Giller Shortlist". Shelf Awareness. 2 October 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  17. "Andre Alexis, Tea Mutonji among finalists for $50,000 Rogers Writers' Trust fiction prize". The Toronto Star. 24 September 2019. ISSN   0319-0781 . Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  18. van Koeverden, Jane (3 November 2021). "Katherena Vermette, Tomson Highway and Cherie Dimaline among winners at 2021 Writers' Trust Awards". CBC. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  19. Segal, Corrine (13 June 2022). "Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards!". Literary Hub. Retrieved 17 June 2022.