Miriam Toews
Miriam Toews (pronounced tâves), (born 1964 in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada) is a Canadian novelist and humorist of Mennonite descent. She has lived in Montreal, and London, and now resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Toews studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of King's College in Halifax, and has also worked as a freelance newspaper and radio journalist. Her 2004 novel A Complicated Kindness was her breakthrough work, spending over a year on the Canadian bestseller lists and winning the Governor General's Award for English Fiction. The novel, about a teenage girl who longs to escape her small Russian Mennonite town and hang out with Lou Reed in the slums of New York City, was also nominated for the Giller Prize and was the winning title in the 2006 edition of Canada Reads.
Bibliography
- Summer of My Amazing Luck, Turnstone Press, 1996, ISBN 0-88801-205-5
- A Boy of Good Breeding, Vintage Canada , 1998, ISBN 0-676-97719-7
- Swing Low: A Life (non-fiction), Vintage Canada, 2000, ISBN 0-676-97718-9
- A Complicated Kindness, Vintage Canada, 2004, ISBN 0-676-97613-1
about Miriam Toews (in german): Christoph Wiebe, Vom Scheitern eines 500jährigen Experiments. Miriam Toews' Roman Ein komplizierter Akt der Liebe, in: Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter, herausgegeben vom Mennonitischen Geschichtsverein, Jg. 63, Bolanden 2006, S. 153-172. ISBN 3-921881-24-2
Awards
- Governor General's Award — A Complicated Kindness.
- Giller Prize (nominated) — A Complicated Kindness.
- McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — Swing Low: A Life.
- Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction — Swing Low: A Life.
- McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — A Boy of Good Breeding.
- Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour (nominated) — Summer of My Amazing Luck.
- John Hirsch Award — Summer of My Amazing Luck.
- National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Humour.
- A Complicated Kindness was chosen for the inclusion in Canada Reads 2006, championed by singer-songwriter, poet and publisher John K. Samson. It won the competition.
External links
- Blueprints A short story that was originally published in a book called Paper Placemats.
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