Adderson, Caroline 1963–

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Adderson, Caroline 1963–

PERSONAL:

Born September 9, 1963, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; daughter of James Neil (an engineer) and Bernice Adderson. Education: University of British Columbia, B.Ed., 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Office—Westwood Creative Artists, 94 Harbord St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6, Canada.

CAREER:

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, instructor in creative writing, 2000-01; Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, instructor in writing and publishing, 2002—. Vancouver Community College, past instructor. Resident at Banff School of Fine Arts, 1987 and 1991, Tyrone Guthrie Centre for Artists, 1989 and 1992, and Leighton Artist Colony, 1993; Westwood Creative Artists, affiliate.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Canada Council grants, 1987, 1989, 1992; prizes from literary competitions, Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 1988, for "The Chmarnyk," and 1991, for "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon"; grant for Ireland, Canada-Ireland Artist Exchange Program, 1989, 1992; nominated for Governor-General's Literary Award for Fiction, 1993, for Bad Imaginings; Federal Express Award, popular Canadian film (with others), Vancouver International Film Festival, 1994, for Tokyo Cowboy; Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, British Columbia Book Prizes, 2003, for Sitting Practice; Marian Engel Award to a female writer in mid-career, Writers' Trust of Canada, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Bad Imaginings (short stories), Porcupine's Quill (Erin, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

Tokyo Cowboy (screenplay), Big Space Productions, 1993.

A History of Forgetting (novel), Patrick Crean Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

Sitting Practice (novel), Thomas Allen Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Pleased to Meet You (short stories), Thomas Allen Publishers (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

Contributor to more than a dozen anthologies, including Out of Place, Coteau Books, 1991; The Journey Prize Anthology, Volume 5, McClelland & Stewart, 1993; The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995; and We Who Can Fly: Poems, Essays, and Memories in Honour of Adele Wiseman, Cormorant Press, 1997. Contributor to periodicals, including Quarry, Mahalat Review, Canadian Fiction, Quill and Quire, New Quarterly, and Saturday Night.

Adderson's writings have also been published in France and Serbia.

ADAPTATIONS:

Work has been broadcast on radio programs, including the short story "Bestiary," on Ambience, CBC-Radio, 1987; the five-part drama Fire of Stones, on Morningside, CBC-Radio, 1989; and the drama The Planet Earth on Sunday Showcase, CBCRadio, 1997.

SIDELIGHTS:

Caroline Adderson won national acclaim in Canada with her first published volume, the short story collection Bad Imaginings. Adderson's storytelling technique involves describing rather offbeat subjects with straightforward narration, and her characters are often social outsiders. Among the ten stories in Bad Imaginings is a prize-winning tale titled "The Chmarnyk," which relates the escapades of a budding rainmaker during a drought in 1929 in Alberta. Other tales, set in the present, are linked to the historical stories by "a quirky, sometimes harsh authorial intelligence that illuminates odd corners of identity and doubt," commented Lesley Krueger in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The critic went on to praise Bad Imaginings as a "singular book, deep and mature" and affirmed that the volume "stays with a reader long after it has been closed."