Merilyn Simonds

Merilyn Simonds (born 1949 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian writer.

Biography

Merilyn Simonds spent her childhood in Brazil, and returned to Canada as a teenager, where she was educated at the University of Western Ontario. She subsequently worked as a freelance writer, and was an editor of Harrowsmith.

Her most famous book is The Convict Lover, published in 1996. That book, a finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Awards, resulted when Simonds found a cache of romantic letters in her attic, written by a prison inmate to a woman who formerly occupied Simonds' house. With only half the story available to her, Simonds published the letters interspersed with her own historical research and speculation about the woman and her romance with a prisoner.

In 1991, Simonds also co-wrote, with Merrily Weisbord, the book accompaniment to the controversial CBC Television documentary The Valour and the Horror.

Simonds also frequently publishes lifestyle and nature journalism for magazines such as Canadian Geographic^[1], Saturday Night and Equinox. She published her first novel, The Holding, in 2004.^[2] From September to December 2006 she served as the Writer in Residence at Green College, University of British Columbia.

Simonds lives with writer and translator Wayne Grady outside Kingston, Ontario.

Works

Nonfiction

• The Art of Soapmaking (Camden House Publishing, 1979)
• Canoecraft (Camden House Publishing, 1983)
• Sunwings (Camden House Publishing, 1985)
• Home Playgrounds (Camden House Publishing, 1987)
• A Chronicle of Our House (Camden House Publishing, 1988)
• The Valour and the Horror (Harper Collins, 1991)
• The Harrowsmith Salad Garden (Camden House, 1992)
• Fit to Drink (Groundwood Books, 1995)
• The Convict Lover (Macfarlane, Walter and Ross, 1996)
• Breakfast at the Exit Café (Greystone Books, 2010)
• "A New Leaf: Growing With My Garden" (Doubleday Canada, 2011)

Fiction

• The Lion in the Room Next Door (McClelland and Stewart, 1999)
• The Holding (McClelland and Stewart, 2004)

As Anthologist:

• Gardens: A Literary Companion (Greystone Books, 2008)
• Night: A Literary Companion (Greystone Books, 2009)

References

1. ^ "Articles by Merilyn Simonds at Canadian Geographic". canadiangeographic.ca. http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/back_issues/contributor.asp?contrib=Merilyn_Simonds&id=1128. Retrieved 2011-05-03. 
2. ^ Halpern, Sue (18 September 2005). "Haunted In Canada". The New York Times: p. 24. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review/18halpern.html. Retrieved 29 May 2011. 

External links

• www.merilynsimonds.com

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Name	Simonds, Merilyn
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Date of birth	1949
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