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Leon Rooke was born in 1934 in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. From 1953 to 1955, he attended Mars Hill College and in 1955 moved to the University of North Carolina where he studied journalism and drama. Drafted by the U.S. Army in 1958, he served in Alaska with the Army infantry until 1960. Though later that year he returned the University of North Carolina to study screenwriting, he soon left university to devote all his attention to journalism and writing drama and fiction. After having produced a number of plays, served as the editor of a North Carolina newspaper, and worked as a writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina, Rooke married his wife Constance and moved with her to Vancouver Island, where she had accepted a job teaching English at the University of Victoria. They lived and worked in Victoria until 1988, when they moved the small town of Eden Mills, Ontario.
Over the course of his career, Leon Rooke has been writer-in-residence at a number of Canadian and American universities, including the University of Victoria, Southwest Minnesota State University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Western Ontario. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Canada-Australia Literary Prize (1981), the Periodical Association of Canada award for English-Language Paperback of the Year for his novel Fat Woman (1982), the Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction for Shakespeare's Dog (1985), The Pushcart Prize (1988), and the North Carolina Award for Literature (1990). Rooke is also the organizer of the Eden Mills Writers Festival, an annual event he founded in 1989.
Leon Rooke is one of Canada's more prolific writers. Having begun his career as a playwright, he has written many scripts for stage, radio, and film. Some, such as Krokodile (1973) and Sword/Play (1974) were written in the 1960s and published later in his career. Others, such as Ms. America (1984), The Coming (1991) and the stage adaptations of Shakespeare's Dog and A Good Baby were written after his move to Canada. The film version of A Good Baby, for which Rooke wrote the screenplay, is currently in production.
Over the last thirty years, he has published twelve collections of short stories: Last One Home Sleeps in the Yellow Bed (1968), The Love Parlour (1977), The Broad Back of the Angel (1977), Cry Evil (1980), Death Suite (1981), The Birth Control King of the Upper Volta (1982), Sing Me No Love Songs and I'll Say You No Prayers: Selected Stories (1984), A Bolt of White Cloth (1984), The Happiness of Others (1981), How I Saved the Province (1981), Who Do You Love? (1992), and Oh!: twenty-seven stories (1997). Other published short fiction include the novellas Vault (1973) and The Magician in Love (1981), Muffins (1995) -- a single short story published along with a 7 inch record of Rooke reading it -- and the chapbook Oh, no, I have not seen Molly (1996). His short stories have also appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals.
Rooke has had great success as a novelist as well. His first novel, Fat Woman was shortlisted for the 1980 Governor-General's Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Three years later, Rooke won the Governor General's Award for this second novel, Shakespeare's Dog. His third novel, A Good Baby, was published in 1989 to critical acclaim. His contribution to the world of Canadian literature also includes work as an anthologist. With John Metcalf he has edited Best Canadian Short Stories 1981, Best Canadian Short Stories 1982, the New Press Anthology (1984), the New Press Anthology # 2 (1985), the Macmillan Anthology 1 (1988), the Second Macmillan Anthology (1989), and the Third Macmillan Anthology (1990).
| Happiness of Others, The |
$ 12.95 | BUY |
|---|---|---|
| Muffins |
$ 16.95 | BUY |
| OH!: Twenty-seven Stories |
$ 19.95 | BUY |
| Who Goes There |
$ 24.95 | BUY |
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