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Selected Authors

Selected authors attending the 2011 Vancouver International Writers Festival

Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone and the UK)

  • Born in Glasgow, raised in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom
  • The Memory of Love, published in April 2010, selected as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and Times, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award 2011, was short-listed for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Warwick Prize
  • The Devil that Danced on the Water, a memoir of her dissident father and of Sierra Leone, was runner up for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003, chosen for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers series and serialised on BBC Radio and in The Sunday Times newspaper
  • Ancestor Stones was a New York Times Editor's Choice book, selected by the Washington Post as one of the Best Novels of 2006 and one of The Listener Magazine's Best 10 Books of 2006. Ancestor Stones is winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction; the 2008 winner of the Liberaturpreis in Germany; the 2010 winner of the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, and was nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award.
  • Television credits include the arts documentary Through African Eyes (BBC), the documentary series Africa Unmasked (Channel 4) and in 2009, The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu (BBC).
  • She is a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund and sits on the advisory committee of the Caine Prize
    • 

Misha Glenny (UK)

  • Central Europe correspondent for The Guardian and later the BBC
  • Specialized in reporting on the Balkans independence wars in the late 1980s and early 1990s that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia
  • Awarded Sony Gold Award (1993) for his “outstanding contribution to broadcasting”
  • Books published
    • The Rebirth Of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy (1990)
    • The Fall of Yugoslavia (1992)
    • The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 (1999)
    • McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (2008) – translated into more than 30 languages
    • Darkmarket: Cyber Thieves, CyberCops and You (2011)
  • Has written for all major British and European newspapers and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker
  • Distinguished Fulbright scholar; former fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington
  • Awarded an honorary doctorate from the American University in Bulgaria

 

Russell Banks (USA)

  • Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • Author of numerous novels, short stories, poetry and non-fiction, including
    • The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
    • Cloudsplitter (finalist, Pulitzer Prize and Pen⁄Faulkner Award, 1998)
    • Continental Drift (finalist, Pulitzer Prize, 1985)
    • Affliction (finalist, Pen⁄Faulkner Award; shortlisted for the Irish International Prize, 1989)
  • Awards
    • John Dos Passos Prize for Fiction, 1985
    • Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships
    • Ingram Merrill Award
    • The St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction
    • O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award
    • Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

 

Linda Grant (UK)

  • Born in Liverpool 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants
  • M.A. in English at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984
  • First novel, The Cast Iron Shore (1996), won the David Higham First Novel Award; shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize
  • Remind Me Who I am Again (1998), an account of her mother’s decline into dementia and the role that memory plays in creating family history, won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year award and the Age Concern Book of the Year award
  • When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize and the Encore Prize
  • Still Here (2002) longlisted for the Booker Prize
  • The People On The Street: A Writer’s View of Israel (2006) won the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage
  • The Clothes On Their Backs (2008) shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the South Bank Show award
  • We Had It So Good published in 2011
  • Her work is translated into French, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Chinese.

 

Thomas Pletzinger (Germany)

  • Born in 1975 and grew up in Germany’s industrial area Ruhrgebiet
  • Has an M.A from Hamburg University and an MFA from the German Literature Institute Leipzig
  • Worked for publishers and a literary scouting agency in New York
  • Won several awards for his writing, including fellowships and teaching positions at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Grinnell College
  • Lives in Berlin where he works as a translator and screenwriter at adler & soehne and teaches at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg
  • Funeral for a Dog published in 2011
  • Awards and Fellowships
    • 2010 NRW-Award for young artists 2010
    • Writer-in-Residence at Grinnell College, USA
    • 2009 Uwe-Johnson-Award 2009
    • Writer-in-Residence at Deutsches Haus at New York University
    • 2008 First-novel-award of Bookstore Wist, Postdam (Small Shark)
    • 2007 Förderpreis zum Großen Kulturpreis der Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland
    • 2006 Max-Kade-Grant at International Writing Program at the University of Iowa
    • Winner MDR Literary Award
    • Work and exchange Grant of the Saxonian Culture Foundation in Wroclaw, Poland
    • Working Grant Jürgen-Ponto-Foundation
    • 2005 Winner of Prosanova Literary Competition

 

For media enquiries about the Festival or to set up interviews with Festival staff or Festival authors, please contact: Judith Walker, Media Relations Manager, 604.921.4029 or email.