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Helen Humphreys

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Helen Humphreys (born 13 June 1961) is a Canadian poet and novelist.

Personal life

Humphreys was born in Kingston-on-Thames, England, along with her brother Martin and sister Cathy. She now lives in Kingston, Ontario with her dog Charlotte. When she was younger she was expelled from high school and had to attend an alternative school to finish her education.[1]

Writing career

Humphreys's first novel, Leaving Earth, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998, and a winner of the City of Toronto Book Award.[2]

In describing how she became a writer, Humphreys said, "I started writing when I was young and I just kept going. I read voraciously. I sent my poems (for I was writing exclusively poems then) out to magazines, and eventually I began to get them published. My first book of poetry came out when I was 25." [3]

In a very favourable review of The Reinvention of Love in The Globe and Mail, Donna Bailey Nurse wrote: "The story is set amid the political turbulence and artistic fervour of 19th-century Paris. Charles Sainte-Beuve, an influential critic, earns the friendship of Victor Hugo after writing a review celebrating the writer’s poems. He joins Hugo’s literary circle, the Cenacle, which includes painter Delacroix, poet Lamartine and the boastful, profligate Alexandre Dumas. Charles becomes a fixture in the bustling Hugo household on Notre-Dame-des-Champs."

The Globe and Mail had this to say about Ms. Humphreys's most recent novel: "The Evening Chorus, when all is said and done, is a formally conventional but for the most part satisfying yarn; a quiet novel about a calamitous event whose most trenchant passages show the cast of Humphreys’s poet’s eye."

Works

Poetry

  • Gods and Other Mortals (1986)
  • Nuns Looking Anxious (1990)
  • Listening to Radios (1990)
  • The Perils of Geography (1995)
  • Anthem (1999)

Novels

Nonfiction

  • Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brothe (2013)[4]
  • The River (2017)

Awards

  • Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry for Anthem (1990)
  • New York Times Notable Book (1998) for Leaving Earth
  • City of Toronto Book Award for Leaving Earth[2]
  • Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (2000) for Afterimage
  • Harbourfront Festival Prize (2009)[5]
  • The Reinvention of Love (2011) was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association for Fiction

References

  1. ^ Biography at Canadian Authors
  2. ^ a b Linda Richards (October 2002). "Interview with Helen Humphrey". January Magazine.
  3. ^ [1]
  4. ^ [2], National Post, April 5, 2013.
  5. ^ Helen Humphreys wins $10,000 literary prize. CBC News, 23 September 2009.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Humphreys&oldid=798938043"