“Words
are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less
human when we use less language.” – Carol Shields
Born
in the U.S. on this date in 1935, Carol Shields grew up in America but spent
much of her adult life in Canada and eventually had dual citizenship. She was a full-time writing professor,
novelist, playwright and short story writer and won both the Pulitzer Prize and
Canada’s equivalent, The Governor General’s Award for her novel The
Stone Diaries. She is the only writer to ever win both awards for
the same book. She died from
cancer in 2003.
Shields short story collections,
including Various Miracles and Dressing Up for the Carnival, also
were much-honored and are part of the Collected Stories of Carol Shields
published after her death. Her nonfiction book on author Jane Austin also
won several major awards. And her
plays, particularly "Departures and Arrivals" and "Thirteen
Hands" have been performed countless times by amateur and professional
theaters around the globe.
To see more of this remarkable woman’s
thoughts and advice on writing, check out her son Nicholas’s recent book Startle
and Illuminate. While Shields was an
advocate of using life experiences in writing, she noted, “There are
chapters in every life which are seldom read . . . and certainly not aloud.”
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