Elizabeth Hay (novelist)

Elizabeth Hay
Elizabeth Hay signing her book Late Nights on Air at the Port Colborne Author Series
Born	October 22, 1951 Owen Sound, Ontario
Occupation	novelist and short story writer
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	University of Toronto
Genre	fiction
Notable works	Late Nights on Air; A Student of Weather, Small Change, Garbo Laughs

Elizabeth Grace Hay^[1] (born October 22, 1951) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.^[2]

Her novel A Student of Weather (2000) was a finalist for the Giller Prize and won the CAA MOSAID Technologies Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award.^[3] She has been a nominee for the Governor General's Award twice, for Small Change in 1997 and for Garbo Laughs in 2003, and won the Giller Prize for her 2007 novel Late Nights on Air.

In 2002, she received the Marian Engel Award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an established female writer for her body of work — including novels, short fiction, and creative non-fiction.

Life

Hay was born on October 22, 1951 in Owen Sound, Ontario.^[4] She is the daughter of a high school principal and a painter. She spent a year in England when she was fourteen, then returned to Canada to attend the University of Toronto.

In January, 1972, she quit university before finishing and travelled out west by train.^[5] In 1974 she moved to Yellowknife, NWT. She worked for ten years as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg and Toronto and then moved to Mexico, where she freelanced. In 1986 she moved to New York City, and then returned to Canada in 1992 with her family. She lives in Ottawa with her husband Mark. She has two children: a son, Ben, and a daughter, Sochi.

Critical reputation and style

In an interview with the CBC in 2007, Hay commented on the relationship between her writing and her career in radio. "When I worked in Yellowknife," she said, "I was writing poetry and stories on the side and not getting very far. I felt kind of schizophrenic, like my radio work was one type of thing and my writing was another and there was a gap between. That became even more pronounced when I started working for CBC’s Sunday Morning, doing radio documentaries. I took me a while to realize that there didn’t need to be such a wide gap between those two forms of writing, and that they could cross-fertilize. Good radio writing is similar to any good writing. It’s direct and economical and intimate and full of detail. Also, it sets your visual imagination working." ^[6]

Bibliography

Novels

A Student of Weather (2000) McClelland & Stewart ISBN 0-7710-3789-9
Garbo Laughs (2003) McClelland & Stewart
Late Nights on Air (2007) McClelland & Stewart
Alone in the Classroom (2011) McClelland & Stewart

Short Story Collections

Small Change (1997) The Porcupine's Quill

Short stories

“The Friend” (in Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, edited by Jane Urquhart, 2007, Penguin Canada)
"Jet in England", Ottawa Magazine summer fiction issue, Jul/Aug 2007
"The Food of Love", Ottawa Citizen, Holiday Edition, 2008
"Of Mattresses and Men", Ottawa Magazine summer fiction issue, July/Aug 2008
"Last Poems", The New Quarterly, Spring 2009
"City as Redhead", The New Quarterly, Spring 2009

Non-fiction

A non-fiction trilogy about Elizabeth Hay's travels outside of Canada:
- Crossing the Snow Line (1989) Black Moss Press
- The Only Snow in Havana (1992) Cormorant Books
- Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (1993) New Star Books

Essays

“Ten Beauty Tips You Never Asked For” (in Dropped Threads 2, edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson, 2003, Vintage Canada)
"The Most Fearless Book I Read", (in The Book I Read, edited by Peder Zane, 2004, Norton)
“My Debt to D.H. Lawrence” (in Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life, edited by Constance Rooke, 2006, McClelland & Stewart)

Anthologies

Short Fiction, an Anthology, edited by Rosemary Sullivan and Mark Levene, Oxford University Press, 2003
The Scotiabank Giller Prize 15 Years: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Canadian Fiction, Penguin, 2008
Best Canadian Essays 2010, Tightrope Books, 2010

Prizes and honours

1993 Co-Winner, Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction (for The Only Snow in Havana)^[7]
1997 Finalist, Governor General’s Award for Fiction (for Small Change)
1997 Finalist, Rogers Communication Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (for Small Change)
1997 Finalist, Trillium Book Award (for Small Change)
2000 CAA MOSAID Technologies Award for Fiction
2000 Finalist, Giller Prize (for A Student of Weather)
2000 Finalist, Ottawa Book Award (for A Student of Weather)
2000 TORGI Award
2002 Marian Engel Award (Writers’ Trust of Canada)
2003 Finalist, Governor-General’s Award for Fiction (for A Student of Weather)
2003 Ottawa Book Award (for Garbo Laughs)
2007 Giller Prize (for Late Nights on Air)

References

↑ Elizabeth Grace Hay The Peerage, retrieved 11/17/2012
↑ Elizabeth Hay's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
↑ W. H. New, ed. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002: 477.
↑ Elizabeth Hay's web site
↑ January Magazine, June 2000
↑ CBC.CA, November 7, 2007
↑ Wilfrid Laurier University 1993: Elizabeth Hay, retrieved 11/17/2012

Recipients of the Edna Staebler Award and shortlist honours

Edna Staebler

1990s Winners	Winning writer, Winning title, (award year), ISBN Susan Mayse, Ginger, (1991), ISBN 9781550170184 – Marie Wadden, Nitassinan, (1992), ISBN 9781550540017 – Liza Potvin, White Lies (for my mother), (1993 co-winner), ISBN 9780920897133 – Elizabeth Hay, The Only Snow in Havana, (1993 co-winner), ISBN 9780920953808 – Linda Johns, Sharing a Robin's Life, (1994), ISBN 9781551090559 – Denise Chong, The Concubine's Children, (1995), ISBN 9780140254273 – George G. Blackburn, The Guns of Normandy, (1996), ISBN 9780771015038 – Anne Mullens, Timely Death, (1997), ISBN 9780394280844 – Charlotte Gray, Mrs. King, (1998), ISBN 9780670866748 – Michael Poole, Romancing Mary Jane, (1999), ISBN 9781550547498

1990s Shortlist nominees	Nominated writer, Nominated title, (nomination year), ISBN Phil Jenkins, Fields of Vision, (1992), ISBN 9780771044014 – Anne Kershaw and Mary Lasovich, Rock-a-bye Baby (1992), ISBN 9780195412680 – Sherrill MacLaren, Invisible Power, (1992), ISBN 9780770425265 – Marlene Webber, Street Kids, (1992), ISBN 9780802067050 – Rosalind MacPhee, Picasso's Woman, (1995), ISBN 9781568361383 – Jack Kuper, After the Smoke Cleared, (1995), ISBN 9780773728325 – Rita Moir, Survival Gear, (1995), ISBN 9780919591813 – Patricia Pitcher, Artists, Craftsmen and Technocrats, (1996), ISBN 9780773728585 – Tom Connors, Stompin' Tom, (1996), ISBN 9780670864874 – Frances Backhouse, Women of the Klondike, (1996), ISBN 9781770500174 – William Aide, Starting from Porcupine, (1997), ISBN 9780778010470 – Phil Jenkins, An Acre of Time (1997), ISBN 9781551990026 – Douglas Chambers, Stony Ground, (1997), ISBN 9780394281544 – Elisabeth Raab, And Peace Never Came, (1998), ISBN 9780889202924 – Lois Sweet, God In The Classroom, (1998), ISBN 9780771083198 – A.C. Lewis, Nahanni Remembered, (1998), ISBN 9781896300184 – Will Ferguson, I Was a Teenage Katima Victim, (1999), ISBN 9781550546521 – James Mahar and Rowena Mahar, Too Many to Mourn (1999), ISBN 9781551092409 – Joni Smith, Charlevoix County, (1999), ISBN 9780494516690

2000s Winners	Winning writer, Winning title, (award year), ISBN Wayson Choy, Paper Shadows, (2000), ISBN 9780312284152 – Taras Grescoe, Sacré Blues, (2001), ISBN 9781551990811 – Tom Allen, Rolling Home, (2002), ISBN 9780670884735 – Alison Watt, The Last Island, (2003), ISBN 9781550172966 – Andrea Curtis, Into the Blue, (2004), ISBN 9780679311355 – Anne Coleman, I'll Tell You a Secret, (2005), ISBN 9780771022784 – Francis Chalifour, After, (2006), ISBN 9780887767050 – Linden MacIntyre, Causeway, (2007), ISBN 9780002007245 – Bruce Serafin, Stardust, (2008), ISBN 9781554200337 – Russell Wangersky, Burning Down the House, (2009), ISBN 9780887623295

2000s Shortlist nominees	Nominated writer, Nominated title, (nomination year), ISBN Beth Powning, Shadow Child, (2000), ISBN 9780786707201 – Ellen Stafford, Always and After, (2000), ISBN 9780670886203 – Kevin Patterson, The Water In Between, (2000), ISBN 9780385498845 – Andrew Steinmetz, Wardlife, ISBN 9781550651218 – Howard Hewer, In For A Penny, In For A Pound, (2001), ISBN 9780385660778 – Mary Pratt, Mary Pratt, (2001), ISBN 9780864923165 – Trevor Herriot, River In A Dry Land, (2001), ISBN 9780773732711 – Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat, (2002), ISBN 9781554682560 – Gabriel Bauer, Waltzing the Tango, (2002), ISBN 9780199744480 – Ron Corbett, The Last Guide, (2002), ISBN 9781894673051 – Cornelia Johanna Baines, Under Syndenham Skies, (2002), ISBN 9781550416152 – Peter McSherry, Mean Streets, (2003), ISBN 9781550024029 – Adam Killick, Racing the White Silence, (2003), ISBN 9780141003733 – Dawn Rae Downton, Seldom, (2003), ISBN 9781559706650 – Ellen Bielawski, Rogue Diamonds, (2004), ISBN 9780295984193 – Kevin Bazzana, Wondrous Strange, (2004), ISBN 9780195182460 – Ralph Osborne, From Somewhere Else, (2004), ISBN 9781550225501 – Alex M. Hall, Discovering Eden, (2004), ISBN 9781552632215 – Tilda Shalof, A Nurse’s Story, (2005), ISBN 9780771080876 – Geoff Heinricks, A Fool and Forty Acres, (2005), ISBN 9780771040566 – Elizabeth Hudson, Snow Bodies, (2005), ISBN 9781896300740 – Michael Mitchell, The Molly Fire, (2005), ISBN 9781550226768 – Lisa Rochon, Up North, (2006), ISBN 9781552636909 – Rosalind B. Penfield, Dragonslippers, (2006), ISBN 9780802170200 – John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce, (2006), ISBN 9780393328646 – Kim Bolan, Loss of Faith, (2006), ISBN 9780771011306 – Marcello De Cintio, Poets & Pahlevans, (2007), ISBN 9780676977325 – Rachel Lebowitz, Hannus, (2007), ISBN 9781897141113 – Patrick Friesen, Interim Essays & Mediations, (2007), ISBN 9780973972702 – Nathan M. Greenfield, Baptism of Fire, (2008), ISBN 9780002007276 – Chantal Hébert, French Kiss, (2008), ISBN 9780676979077 – Jane Hall, The Red Wall, (2008), ISBN 9781897113684 – Martin Mitchinson, The Darien Gap, (2009), ISBN 9781550174212 – Cathy Ostlere, Lost, (2009), ISBN 9781554700431 – Andrew Westoll, The Riverbones, (2009), ISBN 9780771088759

2010s Winners	Winning writer, Winning title, (award year), ISBN John Leigh Walters, A Very Capable Life, (2010), ISBN 9781897425411 – Helen Waldstein Wilkes, Letters from the Lost, (2011), ISBN 9781897425534 – Joshua Knelman, Hot Art, (2012), ISBN 9781553658917 – Carol Shaben, Into the Abyss, (2013), ISBN 9780307360229

2010s Shortlist nominees	Nominated writer, Nominated title, (nomination year), ISBN Allan Casey, Lakeland, (2010), ISBN 9781553653080 – Else Poulsen, Smiling Bears, (2010), ISBN 9781553653875 – Benjamin Errett, Jew and Improved, (2011), ISBN 9781554684274 – Grant Lawrence, Adventures in Solitude, (2011), ISBN 9781550175141 – Robyn Michele Levy, Most of Me, (2012), ISBN 9781553656326 – Andrew Westoll, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, (2012), ISBN 9781554686490

Recipients of the Marian Engel Award

Recipients of the Giller Prize

1990s	M. G. Vassanji, The Book of Secrets (1994) Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (1995) Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (1996) Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version (1997) Alice Munro, The Love of a Good Woman (1998) Bonnie Burnard, A Good House (1999)

2000s	Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost / David Adams Richards, Mercy among the Children (2000) Richard B. Wright, Clara Callan (2001) Austin Clarke, The Polished Hoe (2002) M. G. Vassanji, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003) Alice Munro, Runaway (2004) David Bergen, The Time in Between (2005) Vincent Lam, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (2006) Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air (2007) Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce (2008) Linden MacIntyre, The Bishop's Man (2009)

2010s	Johanna Skibsrud, The Sentimentalists (2010) Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (2011) Will Ferguson, 419 (2012) Lynn Coady, Hellgoing (2013) Sean Michaels, Us Conductors (2014)