Winter, Michael 1965–

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Winter, Michael 1965–

PERSONAL: Born 1965, in England.

ADDRESSES: Home—Canada. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Bloomsbury USA, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Newfoundland Arts and Letters Competition, three-time winner; Winterset Award, for This All Happened: A Fictional Memoir; Drummer General's Award, A Different Drummer Books, for The Big Why.

WRITINGS:

(Editor in chief) Extremities: Fiction from the Burning Rock (short stories), Killick Press (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), 1994.

Creaking in Their Skins (short stories), Quarry Press (Kingston, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

One Last Good Look (short stories), Porcupine's Quill (Erin, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

This All Happened: A Fictional Memoir (novel), House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

The Big Why (novel), House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor of short fiction to various periodicals, and to CBC Radio's Between the Covers.

SIDELIGHTS: English-born Michael Winter grew up in Newfoundland, Canada, an area that infuses the settings of much of his fiction. Two of his short-story collections, Creaking in Their Skins and One Last Good Look, follow the adventures of Gabriel English as he grows up in Newfoundland and eventually sets out to explore the world. The stories themselves offer a range of experiences and emotions, including love, the death of family members, sibling relationships, romantic failures, and enduring friendship. Gabriel English later reappears as the hero of Winter's first novel, This All Happened: A Fictional Memoir, a diary-style story that examines the development of a relationship over a one-year period while Gabriel writes a historical novel set in Newfoundland. A contributor for Resource Links remarked that "the actual story is highly crafted and a pleasure to read."

The Big Why, a fictional account of the year artist Rockwell Kent spent in Newfoundland with his family in 1914, is the historical novel that Gabriel English was supposedly writing during This All Happened. The novel traces Kent's departure from New York City in search of a change of scenery and his experiences during that period. Library Journal critic Leann Restaino called the book "a very slow-moving read," while a Kirkus Reviews contributor found it "a highly entertaining and ultimately profound novel of a quixotic man who reveres nature's awful beauty."