Author
Carol Shields
Birth Date
June 2, 1935
(68 Years)
Death Date
July 16, 2003
Associated Country
Canada
Carol Shields was a celebrated novelist, short story writer, and playwright best known for her insightful portrayals of everyday life, particularly from women’s perspectives. She was born in Chicago, Illinois but later moved to Canada, where she spent most of her adult life and built her literary career, eventually becoming a Canadian citizen.
Shields is best known for her novel The Stone Diaries (1993), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1995 and also received the Governor General's Award. Her writing often focuses on ordinary people and domestic life, exploring themes of identity, memory, and the hidden complexities of seemingly simple lives. Other notable works include Swann, Larry’s Party, and numerous short story collections.
In addition to her fiction, Shields wrote plays, essays, and literary criticism. She was widely admired for her gentle humor, careful attention to detail, and ability to reveal meaning in everyday experiences. Today, she is regarded as one of the most important figures in late 20th-century Canadian literature.
Shields is best known for her novel The Stone Diaries (1993), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1995 and also received the Governor General's Award. Her writing often focuses on ordinary people and domestic life, exploring themes of identity, memory, and the hidden complexities of seemingly simple lives. Other notable works include Swann, Larry’s Party, and numerous short story collections.
In addition to her fiction, Shields wrote plays, essays, and literary criticism. She was widely admired for her gentle humor, careful attention to detail, and ability to reveal meaning in everyday experiences. Today, she is regarded as one of the most important figures in late 20th-century Canadian literature.
Books
The Box Garden 2013
Ever since her husband left her—seemingly vanishing into thin air—Charleen Forrest has supported herself and her fifteen-year-old son on what she earns as an obscure poet and part-time gofer for an...
Happenstance 2013
When we meet Brenda Bowman in “The Wife’s Story,” the forty-year-old mother of two is preparing to fly to Philadelphia to attend a craft convention that will feature one of her quilts. She already has...
Various Miracles 2013
Various Miracles brings together twenty-one short stories, modern parables that illuminate the mysteries of everyday existence.
In the title story, four strangers on a bus are all reading the same...
Swann 2013
Who is Mary Swann?
In this novel of a writer’s revenge, an uneducated farmer’s wife delivers a paper bag filled with scraps of her poems to the publisher of a small press. Hours later, she’s dead,...
Small Ceremonies 2013
Judith Gill lives with her husband, son, and daughter in a nice house in the suburbs of Ontario. She has carved out a niche as a respected biographer. Her universe is shaped and bounded by the lives...
The Stone Diaries 2008
Daisy Goodwill Flett’s life unfolds across the 20th century, from her unusual birth in rural Canada to her later years reflecting on the choices and circumstances that shaped her. Through a series of...
Unless 2006
For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light 'summertime' fiction. But this placid...
Collected Stories 2005
With the profound maturity and exquisite eye for detail that never failed to capture readers of her critically acclaimed novels, Carol Shields, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Stone Diaries,...
Jane Austen 2005
With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the...
All over town people are putting on their costumes; X slips into his wife’s lace-trimmed night gown and waltzes around his bedroom; Tamara is no longer the dull clerk receptionist when she wears that...
Larry's Party 1998
Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony, and tenderness. Larry's Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between...
The Orange Fish 1992
“Milk Bread Beer Ice” is a road trip shared by a husband and wife who no longer communicate through meaningful dialogue. Fifty-year-old “Hazel” is forced to enter an alien workplace after the sudden...