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Showing 1 - 20 of 4155 items
By Joan Bodger. 2000
Gestalt therapist, story-teller, teacher, writer, children's book editor, director of the first Headstart Program in New York State, Joan Bodger…
is a woman whose life has always been intertwined with stories. Her biography depicts how a life -- and a century -- can be shaped and given meaning by personal mythology, how the power of stories can repair a shattered life. While describing her own life she also includes sharp observations of the nuances of class, racial prejudice, and regional and national differences. Some strong language. 2000.By Dragan Todorović. 2006
Serb Dragan Todorovic goes to Belgrade as the editor of a cultural magazine, but his constant clashes with the system…
end in his being drafted into the army. Dragan survives his tour of duty, but his return to Belgrade is unsettling - everything is changing, friendships are collapsing, conversations are guarded, and bit by bit, the country he knows and loves is being torn apart. Some strong language. 2006.By Åsne Seierstad. 2003
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there. In the…
following spring she returned to live with an Afghan family for several months. For more than 20 years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they Communist or Taliban - in order to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the Communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. 2003.By Rosemary Sullivan. 1995
Using the personal impressions of the poet's intimate friends, Rosemary Sullivan builds a composite portrait of Gwendolyn MacEwan, the Toronto…
poet who died in 1987 at the age of 46. The daughter of an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, MacEwen's story is a painful one, yet the richness of her art and inner life redeemed the pain. Winner of the 1995 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.By Edna Barker. 2002
This book is a celebration of Peter Gzowski's life and of the enormous role he played in Canadian life. It…
collects tributes from friends and colleagues, and from grieving strangers who had been touched by him in one of the roles that provide us with the chapters in this book: as a writer in newspapers, magazines, or books; as a radio broadcaster; on camera; as a lover of Canada; and as a father, relative, or trusted friend. 2002.By Tom Hiney. 1997
Chandler created the famous fictional detective Philip Marlowe, whose many investigations in print also made it to the big screen.…
Chandler's own life was centred around his wife Cissy, 18 years his senior. After she died, he embarked on a manic globe-trotting spree that was risky and peppered with chance encounters. 1997.By Wayson Choy. 1999
This is a memoir of the author's childhood days in Vancouver's Chinatown, during the 1930s and 1940s. He is able…
to piece together deeply held family secrets that came from China in the form of "paper shadows." With an engaging style, he reveals the link between these secrets and his own life. Some strong language. Canada Reads 2012. 1999.By Sheila Munro. 2001
An intimate biography of Alice Munro. It describes in a way that only a close relative could, the details of…
her family background, from the Laidlaws who left Scotland in the early 19th century, to Alice Munro's birth in 1931, her early years and marriage all the way to the current family. The constant echoes of settings, situations, and characters that occur in her fiction make this an informative commentary to Munro's works.L. M. Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables and author of more than 20 books, is a household…
name the world over. "Anne of Green Gables" has been translated into 40 different languages and immortalized on film. Montgomery was determined to be a writer, despite the loss of her mother at an early age, her strict and lonely upbringing, and years of doubt and rejection. 2004.By Warren Cariou. 2002
Cariou's memoir on growing up in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where he witnessed the discrimination, anger and fear directed at the…
town's Cree and Métis populations by the European settlers. While he has absorbed these prejudices as his own, he is forced to confront the politics of race as an adult. Then, he discovers secrets that his family had kept hidden for generations, secrets that would alter forever his sense of identity and belonging in Meadow Lake. Winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize of the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada Awards. 2002.By Carol Shields. 2001
In this literary biography, writer Carol Shields throws light on the works of the nineteenth-century English novelist, Jane Austen. Discusses…
the private woman, describing the quiet personal life of a "stern moralist" who wrote "marriage novels" but never married. Canada Reads 2012.By Timothy Findley. 1990
This collection of essays, journalistic pieces and diary entries provides a glimpse into the mind of author Timothy Findley. He…
describes his unusual research methods and gives his impressions and thoughts about other literary figures. Includes a portion of "Famous last words" which was removed before publication. Some strong language. Bestseller 1991. Nominated for the 1993 Talking Book of the Year Torgi Award.By Phyllis Grosskurth. 1997
The first full-scale biography of Lord Byron published in over forty years. Grosskurth portrays the fascinating, complex, and extraordinary figure…
who, during his life, was the most notorious man in Europe and remains one of the greatest and most entertaining poets of any age. 1997.By Stephen Leacock. 1933
Stephen Leacock's biography of the great novelist was, not surprisingly, the first to explore the humour as well as the…
morality of Dickens' novels. Readable, entertaining, and insightful, this biography is a classic work, admirable for both its subject and author. 2004, c1933.By Peter C Newman. 2005
Peter C. Newman's autobiography, from his youth as a pampered child in a Czech chateau; to the Jewish kid in…
short pants being machine-gunned by Nazi fighter planes on the beach at Biarritz, en route to the last ship to escape France in 1940; to a refugee in Canada. He became a journalist and author, writing about Canadian politics, history and business while working as an editor at the Toronto Star and Maclean's. Seeing himself as the perennial outsider, Newman discusses his marriages, enthusiasms, and the controversies that constantly embroil him. 2005.By Timothy Findley. 1998
In the 1960s, Timothy Findley and his partner, William Whitehead, moved to a gently tumbling-down 19th-century farmhouse in southern Ontario.…
It was here that Findley wrote some of his most well known novels. Findley presents reflections on their home, Stone Orchard, some published before, others new. 1998.By Gabrielle Roy. 1987
Traces the author's life from her Manitoba childhood to her return from a two-year stay in France and England just…
before World War II. She describes her isolation and alienation as she searched for an identity and a voice. 1987.By David Stouck. 2003
Ethel Wilson is one of Canada's most important writers. This biography draws on archival material and interviews to describe, in…
detail, her early life as an orphan in England and Vancouver and her long writer's apprenticeship, spanning from the publication of some children's stories in 1919 to the appearance of "Hetty Dorval" in 1947. 2003.By Carol Shields, Marjorie May Anderson. 2001
Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson asked other women authors to write about the experiences that had amazed them, disappointed them,…
or which they had been unprepared for. This collection of diverse, often tender, and sometimes disturbing writings breaks the silences that women still keep. 2001.By Margaret Forster. 1993
Biography of the author of "Rebecca". It reveals many secrets of du Maurier's turbulent, intensely private life. It explores her…
troubled childhood, her stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, her unfortunate marriage, her sexual ambiguity, and her secret wartime love affair. 1993.