| Steven Galloway | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 13, 1975 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Canadian |
Steven Galloway (born July 13, 1975) is a Canadian novelist. Galloway was born in Vancouver, and raised in Kamloops, British Columbia. He attended the University College of the Cariboo and the University of British Columbia. Galloway teaches for the UBC creative writing program. He lives with his wife and two young daughters in New Westminster.[1]
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His debut novel, Finnie Walsh (2000), was nominated for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. This novel could be best described as “a work about the love of hockey and the way two boys form a bond that carries them through life's tragedies and trials.[2]” Galloway was recognized for successfully portraying a child’s perspective without “giving a child an adult's perspective.[3]” The ethnic and economic diversity of the characters has critics describing it as a “truly Canadian book both in content and sensibility.[4]” It has been noted that “The style of Galloway's early literary influences, Farley Mowat and John Irving, is apparent[5]” in this first novel.
His second novel, Ascension (2003), was nominated for the BC Book Prizes' Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and has been translated into over fifteen languages. Notably different from his first novel, Ascension takes a look at the events in the life of a 66 year old Romanian man leading up to his famous tight rope walking between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. "He expertly walks a very fine line, spinning the makings of what might have been a gimmicky immigrant tale into a gripping story of one man’s lifelong balancing act."[6]
His third novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo (2008), was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize [7] and won the 2009 Evergreen Award, the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature [8] and the Borders Original Voices Award.[9] It was heralded as "the work of an expert"[10] by The Guardian, and it has become an international bestseller with rights sold in over 30 countries. Galloway’s third novel is “set during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, it explores the dilemmas of ordinary people caught in the crisis." The title references the true story of Vedran Smailović, a cellist who played for 22 days in sight of snipers to honour the people dying around him. "Nearly Dickensian in its formal precision",[11] the novel follows the lives of three fictional citizens of Sarajevo as they struggle to survive the war [12] The novel examines the gentleness found in humanity and the lasting and healing power of art.[13] The Cellist of Sarajevo sparked some controversy after Smailović demanded financial compensation for his presence in the novel. Galloway has asserted his embrace of the power of the imagination to place oneself in another's experience, to explore a variety of subject matter, themes and cultural backgrounds.[14]