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Carol Shields READING IS, BY DEFINITION, a solitary act, and our society tends to look askance at those who pursue their pleasures in solitude. But 25 years from now I predict a rediscovery of the book as we know it. Suddenly people will be saying of books: how portable, how compact, how direct, how cost-effective, how intimate, how blessedly silent, how vivid, how enduring, how interactive, how revolutionary! Quote from the Vancouver Village
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The youngest of three children, Carol Shields was born in
Oak Park,
Illinois in 1935. She studied at Hanover College, the University of
Exeter in England, and the University of Ottawa, where she received an
M.A. In 1957 she married Donald Hugh Shields, a professor of Civil
Engineering, and moved to Canada. She has lived there ever since. In
addition to raising five children, all of whom are now grown, Shields has
worked as an editorial assistant for the journal Canadian Slavonic Papers
and as a professor at the University of Ottawa, the University of British
Columbia, and the University of Manitoba, where she has taught for the
last fifteen years. She lives in Winnipeg.
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| Shields is the author of several novels and short-story collections, including The Orange Fish, Swann, Various Miracles, Happenstance, and The Republic of Love. Her books have won a Canada Council Major Award, two National Magazine Awards, the Canadian Author's Award, and a CBC short story award. The Stone Diaries was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 1993 Booker Prize, and won Canada's Governor General Award. It was also named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and a "Notable Book" by The New York Times Book Review. Excerpted from the Penguin Biography on Carol Shields. | |
