Jane Urquhart,
Poet and novelist Jane Urquhart was born in a small northern Ontario mining community called Little Long Lac. She has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa and Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 1997, she held the Presidential Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the University of Toronto.
Urquhart has published books of poetry whose titles include "I'm Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace," "False Shuffles," and "The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan." She has also written the novels "The Whirlpool," which was the first Canadian book to win France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (Best Foreign Book Award), "Changing Heaven," "Away," which won the 1994 Trillium Award, and "The Underpainter," which won the Governor General's Award in 1997. She has also written a collection of short fiction, "Storm Glass," and several articles and reviews.
Urquhart has also received the Marian Engel Award, in 1994, for an outstanding body of prose written by a Canadian woman and was named to France's Order of Arts and Letters as a Chevalier in 1996. Her novel "Away" was also short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which is the world's largest literary prized for a single work of fiction, and in 1997, she was asked to serve on the jury for this award.
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