Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels
Born	(1958-04-15) 15 April 1958 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	University of Toronto
Occupation(s)	novelist, poet
Awards	Commonwealth Prize (1986) Canadian Authors Association Award (1991)

Anne Michaels (born 15 April 1958) is a Canadian poet and novelist. Michaels is the current poet laureate of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is perhaps best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces which was adapted for film in 2007.

Early life

Anne Michaels was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1958. Michaels attended Vaughan Road Academy and then later the University of Toronto, where she is an adjunct faculty in the Department of English.

Career

Her first book, The Weight of Oranges (1986), a volume of poetry, was awarded the Commonwealth Prize. She received the National Magazine Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and a nomination for the Governor General's Award for her second collection, Miner's Pond (1991). Michaels has written two novels. She is best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces (1996) (1997 in the UK), which was awarded the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, Orange Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Michaels, who has also composed musical scores for the theater, has said: "when you put a tremendous amount of love into your work, as in any relationship, you can't know--you can only hope--that what you're offering will in some way be received. You shape your love to artistic demands, to the rigors of your genre. But still, it's a labor of love, and it's the nature of love that you must give it freely."

She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books, for which she wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.

In October 2015, Michaels was named as the new poet laureate of Toronto, succeeding George Elliott Clarke.

Bibliography

Poetry collections

• The Weight of Oranges (1986)
• Miners Pond (1991)
• Skin Divers (1999)
• Poems (2000)
• Correspondences (2013) (shortlisted for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize)

Novels

• Fugitive Pieces (1996)
• The Winter Vault (2009)

Children's novels

• The Adventures of Miss Petitfour (2015)

Movies

• Fugitive Pieces (2007)

External links

• Anne Michaels's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Profile at the University of Toronto
• Canadian Authors website
• The poem "Phantom Limbs" from The Weight of Oranges/Miner's Pond