Helen Humphreys

Helen Humphreys (born 13 June 1961) is a Canadian poet and novelist.

Helen Humphreys
Humphreys at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 2016

Personal life

Humphreys was born in Kingston-on-Thames, England, along with her brother Martin and sister Cathy. She now lives in Kingston, Ontario with her dog Charlotte. When she was younger she was expelled from high school and had to attend an alternative school to finish her education.[1]

Writing career

Humphreys's first novel, Leaving Earth, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998, and a winner of the City of Toronto Book Award.[2]

In describing how she became a writer, Humphreys said, "I started writing when I was young and I just kept going. I read voraciously. I sent my poems (for I was writing exclusively poems then) out to magazines, and eventually I began to get them published. My first book of poetry came out when I was 25." [3]

In a very favourable review of The Reinvention of Love in The Globe and Mail, Donna Bailey Nurse wrote: "The story is set amid the political turbulence and artistic fervour of 19th-century Paris. Charles Sainte-Beuve, an influential critic, earns the friendship of Victor Hugo after writing a review celebrating the writer’s poems. He joins Hugo’s literary circle, the Cenacle, which includes painter Delacroix, poet Lamartine and the boastful, profligate Alexandre Dumas. Charles becomes a fixture in the bustling Hugo household on Notre-Dame-des-Champs."

The Globe and Mail had this to say about Ms. Humphreys's recent novel: "The Evening Chorus, when all is said and done, is a formally conventional but for the most part satisfying yarn; a quiet novel about a calamitous event whose most trenchant passages show the cast of Humphreys’s poet’s eye."

Quill & Quire says of The River (2017): "Comparing The River to Helen Humphreys’s critically acclaimed bestseller The Frozen Thames, her 2007 collection of vignettes about the eponymous river, it’s obvious that the author is not content to repeat past successes. The new book, a wide-ranging exploration of the Napanee River in Ontario, along which she owns a small property, clearly shows that Humphreys possesses extraordinary tools and wields them with daring and precision."

Works

Poetry
  • Gods and Other Mortals (1986)
  • Nuns Looking Anxious (1990)
  • Listening to Radios (1990)
  • The Perils of Geography (1995)
  • Anthem (1999)

Novels
  • Ethel on Fire (1991
  • Leaving Earth (1998) - winner of the City of Toronto Book Award
  • Afterimage (2000) - winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
  • The Lost Garden (2002)
  • Wild Dogs (2004) - adapted for the stage by Anne Hardcastle in 2008
  • The Frozen Thames (2007)
  • Coventry (2008)
  • The Reinvention of Love (2011)
  • The Evening Chorus (2015)
  • Machine Without Horses (2018)

Nonfiction
  • Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother (2013)[4]
  • The River (2015)
  • The Ghost Orchard The Hidden History of the Apple in North America (2017)

Awards
  • Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry for Anthem (1990)
  • New York Times Notable Book (1998) for Leaving Earth
  • City of Toronto Book Award for Leaving Earth[2]
  • Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (2000) for Afterimage
  • Harbourfront Festival Prize (2009)[5]
  • The Reinvention of Love (2011) was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association for Fiction
  • Appointed to a four-year term as Poet Laureate of Kingston, Ontario, March 2015[6]
  • The Evening Chorus was longlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award.[7]

References
  1. Biography at Canadian Authors
  2. Linda Richards (October 2002). "Interview with Helen Humphrey". January Magazine.
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 November 2014. Retrieved 19 October 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), National Post, April 5, 2013.
  5. Helen Humphreys wins $10,000 literary prize. CBC News, 23 September 2009.
  6. "Helen Huphreys New Poet Laureate of Kingston Ontario". Brick Books. 9 March 2015.
  7. "International Literary Award; Atwood, Hill among 14 Canadians listed for prize". Chronicle-Herald. 22 November 2016. ProQuest 1842554677.
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