Biography

A good measure of the calibre of Lynn Coady’s work and its positive critical reception is the fact that a writer as young as Coady is already considered by the Canada Council for the Arts as an artist in mid-career (she won the Council’s 2005 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for an artist in mid-career). Known for her distinctive brand of comic Maritime realism, Coady was born in Port Hawkesbury in 1970 and lived there until 1988 when she moved to Ottawa to pursue journalism at Carleton University. Changing gears, however, Coady ended up graduating with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. After completing her undergraduate work, Coady went on to graduate with an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia. While there, she completed her first novel, Strange Heaven, which was subsequently shortlisted for the 1998 Governor-General’s Award and which won the 1998 Air Canada/Canadian Author’s Association Award for Most Promising Writer Under Thirty and the 1999 Atlantic Bookseller’s Choice Award. This novel draws from Coady’s own experience as an adopted child and as a pregnant teenager who put her child up for adoption. Since publishing Strange Heaven, Coady has published three other novels, Saints of Big Harbour (2002), Mean Boy (2006), and The Antagonist (2011), which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and one collection of short stories, Play the Monster Blind (2000), which won the Dartmouth Book and Writing Award for fiction. She has also edited Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada (2003). Though Coady is primarily known as a fiction writer, she has written extensively for Canadian periodicals, including The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night, Canadian Geographic and Chatelaine. Furthermore, Coady served as a senior writer and editor at the Vancouver-based Adbusters Magazine. Coady also has experience as a creative writing teacher, having taught at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, The Maritime Writer’s Workshop, Douglas College and The Sage Hill Writing Experience. Her short story collection Hellgoing won the 2013 Giller Prize.

Bibliography

  • Strange Heaven. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 1998.
  • Play the Monster Blind: Stories. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2000.
  • Saints of Big Harbour. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2002.
  • ed. Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2003.
  • Mean Boy. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006.
  • ed. The Anansi Reader: Forty Years of Very Good Books. Toronto: Anansi, 2007.
  • The Antagonist. Toronto: Anansi, 2011.
  • Hellgoing. Toronto: Anansi, 2013.

    See also:
  • "On Behaving Badly." Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life. Ed. Constance Rooke. Toronto: McClelland, 2006. 110-16.
Selected Overviews
Mean Boy
Strange Heaven

Click on selected overview to read...

Critical Sources

  • Baxter, Gisèle M. “Innocence and Experience.” Rev. of Lynn Coady’s Mean Boy. Canadian Literature 189 (2006): 164-5.
  • Coady, Lynn. “A tragic comedy.” Quill & Quire 72.2 (2006): 90, 89.
  • Domet, Stephanie. Rev. of Play The Monster Blind, by Lynn Coady. Quill & Quire 66.2 (2000): 36-7. [LINK]
  • Drainie, Bronwyn. “I am Acadian.” Quill & Quire 68.2 (2002): 33. [LINK]
  • Fuller, Danielle. “Living in Hopes - Atlantic Realities and Realisms.” Canadian Literature 170/171 (2001): 199-202.
  • Halim, Nadia. Rev. of Strange Heaven, by Lynn Coady. Quill & Quire 64.4 (1998): 24. [LINK]
  • Hamilton, Geoff. "Big Harbour, Small Life." Essays on Canadian Writing 79 (2003): 168-9. Hepburn, Allan. “Ordure and Ornament.” Canadian Literature 180 (2004): 122-4.
  • Hodd, Tom. Rev. of Strange Heaven, by Lynn Coady. The Antigonish Review 119 (1999): 89-93.
  • Hoefle, Harold. “Travels in Coadyland.” Rev. of Saints of Big Harbour, by Lynn Coady. Books in Canada 31.4 (2002): 3. [LINK]
  • Ivison, Douglas. “'It's No Different Than Anywhere Else': Regionalism, Place and Popular Culture in Lynn Coady’s Saints of Big Harbour. Canadian Literature 208 (2011): 109-25.
  • Kelly, Tony. "A Place Called 'Strange Heaven.'" Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 11.2 (2004): 213-22.
  • Pyper, Andrew. “Heaven on Earth.” Quill & Quire 64.12 (1998): 1-13.
  • Sinclair, Sue. Rev. of Play the Monster Blind. The Fiddlehead 208 (2001): 158-61.
  • Steeves, Rachel. "'Flawed Splendour': A Conversation with Lynn Coady. Studies in Canadian Literature 32.1 (2007): 231-38.
  • Sugars, Cynthia. "The Word I Am Not." Rev. of Lynn Coady's Mean Boy. Books in Canada (2006): 7-8.
  • Sutherland, Katherine G. “To Plot or Not.” Canadian Literature 173 (2002): 127-9.
  • Taylor, Jim. Rev. of Play the Monster Blind: Stories, by Lynn Coady. The Antigonish Review 125 (2001): 29-36.
  • Wyile, Herb. “As For Me and Me Arse: Strategic Regionalism and the Home Place in Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven. Canadian Literature 189 (2006): 85-101.

    See also:
  • LynnCoady.com - Lynn Coady's Official Website
  • Writer's Cafe Interview with Lynn Coady about Saints of Big Harbour
  • David Creelman, Setting in the East: Maritime Realist Fiction (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003) 189-92.