Timothy Findley was born in 1930. A native of Toronto, Canada, novelist and playwright Timothy Findley initially embarked upon an acting career. Findley worked for the Canadian Stratford Festival and later, after study at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, he toured Britain, Europe, and the United States as a contract player. While performing in The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, Findley was encouraged by the playwright to write fiction. Influenced by film techniques, Findley's first novel, The Last of the Crazy People (1967) is a penetrating look at a family of "emotional cripples" from a child's perspective. With his character Hooker, Findley captures the irrational logic of a child's mind without treating childhood sentimentally.The Butterfly Plague followed in 1969. The Wars (1978), Findley's most successful novel, has been translated into numerous languages and was made into a film. The Wars uses the device of a story-within-a-story to illustrate how a personality transcends elemental forces even while being destroyed by them. In 1981 Famous Last Words was published. This fictionalization of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound, a work that was already a "fictional fact," examines fascism. In Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), Findley rewrites the story of Noah's Ark by giving voices to women, children, workers, animals, and folklore creatures, all of whom question Noah's authority. The novel turns into a parable that seems to challenge imperialism, eugenics, fascism, and any other force that endangers human survival. Again repeating an earlier text, Findley turns to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to write The Telling of Lies (1986). This novel draws parallels between World War II atrocities and contemporary North America, which Findley sees as a metaphoric concentration camp. Findley died on June 20, 2002 in Provence, France
Guy Vanderhaeghe was born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, Canada on April 5, 1951. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Saskatchewan and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Regina. His works include Man Descending, which won the Governor General's Award for English fiction and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in Great Britain; My Present Age; The Englishman's Boy, which won the Governor General's Award for English fiction, the Saskatchewan Book Award Fiction prize, and the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award; Homesick, which was a co-winner of the City of Toronto Book Award; and Daddy Lenin and Other Stories, which won the Governor General's Award for English fiction. His first play, I Had a Job I Liked. Once., won the Canadian Authors Association prize for the best drama published in 1993.
