Norman Levine

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Norman Levine (October 22, 1923-June 14, 2005) was a Canadian short-story writer.

He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and spent most of his adult life in England.

His wealthy Jewish family had fled to Canada with the advent of anti-semitism in the years prior to World War II. His adolescence was spent on the streets of Ottawa, but his coming of age was his time as a Lancaster bomber pilot for the Canadian division of the RAF. He was based at Leeming.

Post-war he met an Englishwoman, Margaret, settled down and they had three children. His writing, a reflection of his life, was also a direct influence on that life, as he had little money to keep up rent payments: as a result his family often moved.

He is perhaps best remembered for his terse prose. Though he was part of the St. Ives artistic community, friends of Patrick Heron and Francis Bacon, his written expression was not abstract, but concrete.

After England he lived, for a time, in Canada, with his second wife. He also lived in France before, finally, returning to England, where he died some ten years later.

In 2002 he was presented with the Matt Cohen Award (established in 2001 by the Writers' Trust of Canada to recognize a lifetime of work by a Canadian writer).