Dennis Bock

Last updated

Dennis Bock (born August 28, 1964) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, lecturer at the University of Toronto, travel writer and book reviewer. His novel Going Home Again was published in Canada by HarperCollins and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2013. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Contents

Going Home Again earned a review in Kirkus Review. [1]

The Communist's Daughter, published by HarperCollins in Canada and Knopf in the US in 2006, and later in France, the Netherlands, Greece and Poland, is a retelling of the final years in the life of the Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune. [2]

His first novel, The Ash Garden, about various kinds of fallout from the Hiroshima bomb, was published in 2001, and was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Regional Best Book). It won the 2002 Canada-Japan Literary Award and has been published in translation in Spain, Argentina, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France and Greece. Bock was reviewed in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times (by Michiko Kakutani). His editor at Knopf, starting with The Ash Garden, is Gary Fisketjon. [3]

After serving as fiction editor at the literary journal Blood & Aphorisms and holding writing residences at Yaddo, the Banff Centre, and Fundacion Valparaiso, in Spain, Bock published his first book, a short story collection Olympia, in 1998, for which he won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best debut short story collection in Canada, the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Award, and the Betty Trask Award in the UK.

His short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, The Journey Prize Anthology, and Coming Attractions. His travel writing and book reviews appear in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Washington Post, and Outpost Magazine.

Personal life

Dennis Bock was born August 28, 1964, in Belleville, Ontario. He studied English literature and philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, and took one year off during that time to live in Spain. After completing his degree he returned to Madrid, Spain, where he lived for 4 years. It was there he finished writing Olympia. Bock lives in Toronto and has two sons. [4] He teaches at the University of Toronto [5] and is on faculty at Humber College's School for Writers. [6]

Prizes and honours

Awards for Bock's writing
YearTitleAwardResult
1998Olympia Danuta Gleed Literary Award Winner [7]
1998Olympia Betty Trask Award Winner[ citation needed ]
1999Olympia City of Toronto Book Award Shortlist[ citation needed ]
2001 The Ash Garden Books in Canada First Novel Award Shortlist[ citation needed ]
2001 The Ash Garden Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Regional Best BookShortlist[ citation needed ]
2002 The Ash Garden Kiriyama Pacific Rim PrizeShortlist[ citation needed ]
2002 The Ash Garden International Dublin Literary Award Shortlist[ citation needed ]
2002 The Ash Garden Canada-Japan Literary AwardWinner[ citation needed ]
2012Going Home Again Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist [8] [9] [10]

Bibliography

Novels

Short stories

Related Research Articles

<i>The Time in Between</i> 2005 novel by David Bergen

The Time in Between is a novel by Canadian author David Bergen. It deals with a man, who mysteriously returns to Vietnam, where he had been a soldier earlier in his life, followed by his children, who also go to Vietnam to search for him. The novel was the recipient of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in 2005.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Toews</span> Canadian writer (born 1964)

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.

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">Marina Endicott</span> Canadian writer

Marina Endicott is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Her novel, Good to a Fault, won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. Her next, The Little Shadows, was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award. Close to Hugh, was long-listed for the Giller Prize and named one of CBC's Best Books of 2015. Her latest, The Difference, won the City of Edmonton Robert Kroetsch prize. It was published in the US by W.W. Norton as The Voyage of the Morning Light in June 2020.

Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.

<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.

<i>A Good House</i> 1999 novel by Bonnie Burnard

A Good House is the first novel by Canadian writer Bonnie Burnard, published by Picador in 1999 and later by Henry Holt and Company in United States of America. It was the winner of that year's Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel narrates the story of a family in three generations, five houses starting from 1949 until 1997.

<i>The Ash Garden</i> Book by Dennis Bock

The Ash Garden is a novel written by Canadian author Dennis Bock and published in 2001. It is Bock's first novel, following the 1998 release of Olympia, a collection of short stories. The Ash Garden follows the stories of three main characters affected by World War II: Hiroshima bombing victim Emiko, German nuclear physicist Anton Böll, and Austrian-Jewish refugee Sophie Böll. The narrative is non-linear, jumping between different times and places, and the point of view alternates between the characters; Emiko's story being written in the first person while Anton and Sophie's stories are written in the third person. Bock took several years to write the novel, re-writing several drafts, before having it published in August 2001 by HarperCollins (Canada), Alfred A. Knopf (USA) and Bloomsbury (UK).

<i>Clara Callan</i> 2001 novel by Richard B. Wright

Clara Callan is a novel by Canadian writer Richard B. Wright, published in 2001. It is the story of a woman in her thirties living in Ontario during the 1930s and is written in epistolary form, utilizing letters and journal entries to tell the story. The protagonist, Clara, faces the struggles of being a single woman in a rural community in the early 20th century. The novel won the Governor General's Award in the English fiction category, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Award.

Kim Echlin is a Canadian novelist, translator, editor and teacher. She has a PhD in English literature for a thesis about the translation of the Ojibway Nanabush myths. Echlin has worked for CBC Television and several universities. She currently works as a creative writing instructor at the University of Toronto School for Continuing Studies. Her 2009 novel, The Disappeared, featured on the shortlist for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Page</span> British-Canadian writer (born 1958)

Kathy Page is a British-Canadian writer.

Alexander MacLeod is a Canadian writer and professor of English, Creative Writing and Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His debut short-story collection Light Lifting was a shortlisted nominee for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. It won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award in the 2011 Atlantic Book Awards. In 2019, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story, "Lagomorph", which was first published in Granta.

<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">Alix Ohlin</span> Canadian writer

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.

<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.

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.

<i>Us Conductors</i> 2014 novel by Sean Michaels

Us Conductors is a debut novel by Canadian writer Sean Michaels. Published in 2014 by Random House in Canada and Tin House in the United States, the novel is a fictionalized account of the relationship between Léon Theremin, the inventor of the theremin, and Clara Rockmore, the musician regarded as the instrument's first virtuoso player.

<i>How to Pronounce Knife</i> 2020 short story collection by Souvankham Thammavongsa

How to Pronounce Knife is a short story collection by Souvankham Thammavongsa, published in 2020 by McClelland & Stewart. The stories in the collection centre principally on the experiences of Laotian Canadian immigrant families, sometimes from the perspective of children observing the world of adults.

References

  1. "GOING HOME AGAIN | Kirkus Reviews". www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews.
  2. THE COMMUNIST'S DAUGHTER | Kirkus Reviews.
  3. "Nashville Public Library".
  4. "Bio". Archived from the original on 2014-01-09. Retrieved 2014-01-09.
  5. "Creative Writing Instructors - School of Continuing Studies". Archived from the original on 2017-08-10. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  6. "Dennis Bock". Archived from the original on 2017-12-19. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  7. "2002 Canada-Japan Literary Awards go to Dennis Bock, Michael David Kwan and Ook Chung". Canada Council for Arts. 2002. Retrieved 20 December 2012.[ permanent dead link ]
  8. "Giller Prize shortlist announced". Montreal Gazette , October 9, 2013.
  9. "The Scotiabank Giller Prize Announces its 2013 Shortlist". Scotiabank Giller Prize . 2013-10-08. Retrieved 2023-01-27.
  10. "The 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize announces its shortlist". News Wire. 2013-10-08. Retrieved 2023-01-27.