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Miriam Toews (; born 1964 in Steinbach, Manitoba) is a Canadian writer, best known for her novels ''A Complicated Kindness'' and ''All My Puny Sorrows''. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. She is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Toews had a leading role in the feature film ''Silent Light'', written and directed by Mexican filmmaker, Carlos Reygadas and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that informed her fifth novel, ''Irma Voth''. ==Life and work== Toews grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba, the second daughter of Mennonite parents. Through her father, Melvin C. Toews, she is a direct descendent of one of Steinbach's first settlers, Klaas R. Reimer (1837-1906), who arrived in Manitoba in 1874 from Ukraine. Her mother, Elvira Loewen, is a daughter of the late C.T. Loewen, a respected entrepreneur who founded a lumber business that would become Loewen Windows. As a teenager, Toews rode horses and took part in provincial dressage and barrel-racing competitions. She left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal and London before settling in Winnipeg. She has a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Manitoba, and a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King's College, Halifax. Toews wrote her first novel, ''Summer of My Amazing Luck'' (1996), while working as a freelance journalist. The novel, which explores the evolving friendship of two single mothers in a Winnipeg public housing complex, developed from a documentary which Toews was preparing for CBC Radio on the subject of welfare mothers. It was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Toews won the latter prize with her second novel, ''A Boy of Good Breeding'' (1998). Toews has written for CBC's ''WireTap'', ''Canadian Geographic'', ''Geist'', ''The Guardian'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''Intelligent Life'', and ''Saturday Night''. In 1999, she won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Humour. She is the author of ''The X Letters'', a series of personal dispatches addressed to the father of her son, which were featured on ''This American Life'' in an episode about missing parents. Toews' father committed suicide in 1998. His death inspired Toews to write a memoir in her father's voice, ''Swing Low: A Life''. The book was greeted as an instant classic in the modern literature on mental illness, and it won the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Toews' father suffered from depression much of his life, but he was an active and well-respected elementary school teacher who lobbied to establish Steinbach's first public library. After his death, the Steinbach Library Board opened the Melvin C. Toews Reading Garden on the grounds of the library he worked to create. Toews' older sister and only sibling, Marjorie, committed suicide in 2010, almost 12 years to the day after their father. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Miriam Toews」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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