Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews was born and raised in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada, the second daughter of Mennonite parents and a direct descendant of one of Steinbach's first settlers, Klaas R. Reimer, who arrived in Manitoba in 1874 from the Ukraine. Her best-selling novels, which include Fight Night, Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness, have won numerous literary awards: the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. She is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Toews had a leading role in the feature film, Silent Light, written and directed by Carlos Reygadas, and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that informed her fifth novel, Irma Voth.