Joan Givner engages the heart and mind in this refreshing and readable collection of short stories and essays. Nineteen pieces demonstrate, with the author's trademark acuity, how biography — and autobiography — finds its way into fiction.

Implicitly feminist, Givner's compassionate yet unflinching eye vividly renders each secret pain and joy of her protagonists' experiences. Life writing, life reading, life itself: all jump out in multidimensional clarity.

Joan Givner was born in Manchester, England, in 1936. After studying at London University and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, she began teaching at the Unviersity of Regina in 1965; later she edited the Wascana Review. She has published biographies of Katherine Anne Porter (1982) and Mazo de la Roche (1989) and two collections of stories, most recently Scenes from Provincial Life (1991). "Elizabeth," a prize winner in the 1991 CBC Canadian Literary Awards, was published in a Joan Givner Special Issue of Room of One's Own in 1992.

Joan Givner's profile page