Carol Shields: 1935-2003
© Paula E. Kirman
On July 16, 2003, the world of Canadian Literature lost one of its strongest voices. Carol Shields died at the age of 68 at her home in Victoria from complications of breast cancer.
Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois on June 2, 1935, and moved to Canada in her early 20's after her marriage to Canadian Donald Hugh Shields.
The couple lived in Winnipeg for much of their life, where Carol was a Professor of English at the University of Manitoba. Her academic accomplishments also included stints as a professor at the University of Ottawa and the University of British Columbia.
However, it is her literary work for which she will be most remembered. Her 1993 novel, The Stone Diaries, won the Pulitzer Prize, and to this day remains her best-known work. It won other awards, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize.
Other notable titles include the Orange Prize winning (a British literary award) Larry's Party from 1997, and the short story collections Dressing Up for the Carnival (2001) and The Orange Fish (1989). Shields was also a prolific author of poetry, criticism, and plays.
In recent years, Shields continued to remain busy despite her diagnosis of Stage-3 breast cancer in 1998. Along with Marjorie Anderson, she edited two books of non-fiction essays written by women expressing the less happy sides of life in Dropped Threads, Volumes One and Two. Volume Two was published earlier this year. Her final novel, Unless, was published in 2002 to accolades from both readers and critics.
I strongly regret never having interviewed Carol Shields. By the time Dropped Threads II was published, she was too ill to do much media or go on tour. Fortunately, words can travel, even when people can't, and the book held steady on Canadian best-seller lists for many weeks.
She is survived by her husband Donald, their five children, and eleven grandchildren.
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