Carol Ann Shields

Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan)

Ed. by Wendy Roy, University of Saskatchewan
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Sean Seeger (University of Essex), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

Born 2 Jun 1935
Died 16 Jul 2003
Activity 1972-2003

Places

Born in United States
Active in Canada; United States

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Other

Biographer
Editor
Essayist
Playwright / Dramatist
Poet

Resources

Carol Shields (b. June 2, 1935, d. July 16, 2003) wrote primarily about what she called “the arc of the human life.” She is best known for her award-winning novel about one such life, The Stone Diaries, which won the Governor General's Award in Canada and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Prize in the United States, and was short-listed for the Commonwealth's Man Booker Prize. But Shields was first a writer of poetry and short stories; has written nine other novels, set in both her adopted country, Canada, and her country of birth, the United States; and is the author of plays, essays, a critical study, and a biography.

Carol Ann Warner was born and raised in the middle-class suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, attended Hanover College in Indiana, then on a...

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Citation: Roy, Wendy. "Carol Ann Shields". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4058, accessed 14 December 2025.]

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