Joan Barfoot

Last updated

Joan Louise Barfoot (born May 17, 1946) is a Canadian novelist. She has published 11 novels, including Luck (2005), which was a nominee for the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Critical Injuries (2001), which was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Her latest novel, Exit Lines, was published in 2009.

Contents

Life and career

Joan Barfoot was born on May 17, 1946, in Owen Sound, Ontario, and graduated with a degree in English from the University of Western Ontario in 1969.[ citation needed ] She worked as a reporter and editor for various newspapers in Ontario including the Windsor Star , the Toronto Sun and the London Free Press . [1] As a child, while she and her mother watched a squirrel in their back yard from their kitchen, her mother told Barfoot to tell her the squirrel's story and she'd write it down. Barfoot doesn't remember the story but remembers her delight when her mother read the story back to her and the power of creating it.[ citation needed ] Barfoot was also encouraged to write by a teacher who told Barfoot she wrote well and to consider some word-related career. In addition to writing Barfoot occasionally teaches creative writing classes though she believes writing ought to be an entirely private pleasure and a puzzle. [2] She lives in London, Ontario.

In 1986, her second novel, Dancing in the Dark (1982), became a film of the same name, starring Martha Henry. It won three Genie Awards, including Best Art Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Dancing in the Dark is a novel about the reflection of a criminally insane woman who is serving time in prison for the murder of her unfaithful husband. She explains her reasoning for the murder throughout the novel while looking for psychological freedom.[ citation needed ]

Barfoot's work has been compared internationally with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble, Fay Weldon and Margaret Atwood. [3]

Barfoot's first novel to win an award was Abra. Abra is about a young mother who abandons her home, husband and children and moves to the Canadian Wilderness.[ citation needed ]

In 1992, she won the Marian Engel Award, presented each year by the Writers' Trust of Canada to a female Canadian novelist who is in the middle of her career.

Critical commentary

In 2005, the Giller jury committee, describing Luck, wrote that "Joan Barfoot is at the peak of her powers with this splendidly realized tragicomedy about a household in the wake of an unexpected death. With its note-perfect narration, mordant wit and wonderfully neurotic cast of characters, Luck shows how death can reveal life in all its absurdity and complexity. This scintillating comedy of manners is also a profound meditation on fate, love, and artifice." [4]

Prizes and honours

Bibliography

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.

Bonnie Burnard was a Canadian short story writer and novelist, best known for her 1999 novel, A Good House, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Marian Ruth Engel was a Canadian novelist and a founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada. Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear (1976), a tale of erotic love between an archivist and a bear.

Kerri Sakamoto is a Canadian novelist. Her novels commonly deal with the experience of Japanese Canadians.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shani Mootoo</span> Canadian artist

Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at the age of 19 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eden Robinson</span> Indigenous Canadian author

Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations.

<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.

<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.

Billie Livingston is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Livingston grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.

Joan Clark was a Canadian fiction author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Messud</span> American novelist and academic

Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).

<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>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 English fiction category, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Award.

The Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award is a Canadian literary award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an established Canadian author to honour their body of work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Thomas</span> Canadian novelist and book reviewer

Joan Thomas is a Canadian novelist and book reviewer from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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.

<i>Bear</i> (novel) 1976 novel by Marian Engel

Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the Governor General's Literary Award the same year. It is Engel's fifth novel, and her most famous. The story tells of a lonely archivist sent to work in northern Ontario, where she enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. The book has been called "the most controversial novel ever written in Canada".

<i>The Age of Longing</i> 1995 novel by Richard B. Wright

The Age of Longing is a 1995 novel by Canadian author Richard B. Wright and published by HarperCollins. The novel was nominated for the 1995 Scotiabank Giller Prize and Governor General's Award in the English-language fiction category.

References

  1. ↑ Canadian Books & Authors web site
  2. ↑ "An Interview with Joan Barfoot". Archived from the original on 2012-01-27. Retrieved 2010-11-04.
  3. ↑ Author web site
  4. ↑ "Bookclubs.ca web site". Archived from the original on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2010-09-23.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.