Alison Pick

Alison Pick
Alison Pick, 2015
Born1975 (age 50–51)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupationsnovelist, poet
SpouseEric O'Brien
ChildrenAyla (b.2009)
RelativesThomas Pick (father)
Emily (sister)

Alison Pick (born 1975) is a Canadian writer. She is most noted for her Booker Prize-nominated novel Far to Go, and was a winner of the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer in Canada under 35.

Life and career

Alison Pick is the author of three novels (The Sweet Edge, Far to Go, and Strangers With the Same Dream), two poetry collections and one memoir (Between Gods). She was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Kitchener. In 1999, she graduated from the University of Guelph with a B.A. in psychology. Pick received her MA in philosophy from Memorial University in Newfoundland. During her teenage years, Pick discovered that her father's Czech family was originally Jewish although he had been raised a Christian. Pick herself later converted to Judaism.

Pick's novel Far to Go won the Canadian Jewish Book Award and was nominated for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. The novel has been optioned for film by House of Films, with a screenplay written by Hannah Moscovitch and Rosa Laborde.

Pick is the author of Between Gods, a memoir about depression, family secrets, and forging a new identity from the ashes of the past. It won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Memoir, and was shortlisted for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and for the Wingate Prize in the UK. Between Gods was also a Top Book of 2014 at the CBC and The Globe and Mail.

The title section of Pick's poetry collection Question & Answer won the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for Poetry and the 2003 National Magazine Award for Poetry. The book itself was short-listed for the League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry, and for a Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award. Pick also won the 2005 CBC Literary Award for Poetry. Her writing has appeared widely in publications including The Globe and Mail,The Walrus, and enRoute Magazine.

Pick served on the jury for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Pick taught at the Iceland Writers Retreat in Reykjavík, Iceland in the spring of 2015. She is currently a member of the faculty at the Humber School for Writers and the Sage Hill Writing Experience. She lives and writes in Toronto.

Awards

Festivals

Juries

Anthologies

Radio appearances

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Sweet Edge – 2005
  • Far to Go – 2010
  • Strangers with the Same Dream - 2017

Poetry

  • Question & Answer – 2003
  • The Dream World – 2008

Non-fiction memoir

  • Between Gods: A Memoir – 2014

References

  1. ↑ My New Boyfriend Has 3 Kids. I Wondered: Would I Have Any Love Left To Give Them?, by Alison Pick, September 5, 2017, Chatelaine, ...As a newly divorced mother in my late thirties, I did not set out to fall in love with another parent. I already had my daughter, and one was enough...
  2. ↑ My mid-life adventures in the sometimes great, often gross, always weird world of online dating, By Alison Pick, September 6, 2017, torontolife.com, .... And yet that's exactly where I found myself after my marriage ended in 2014...
  3. ↑ How to write a bestselling novel while your boobs are leaking, By Alison Pick, September 1, 2017, todaysparent.com
  4. ↑ Between Gods by Alison Pick: Review, By Patricia Dawn Robertson, September 13, 2014, The Star
  5. ↑ Books: Memoir touching if excessive, By Nancy Schiefer, September 28, 2014, The London Free Press
  6. ↑ Interview: Alison Pick, By Simon Round, September 1, 2011, The Jewish Chronicle
  7. ↑ Writer discovers Jewish heritage, By Joan Sullivan, Published on April 07, 2012, The Telegram Deprecated link archived September 19, 2012, at archive.today Archived version
  8. ↑ "Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist: Alison Pick interview". The Man Booker Prizes. August 8, 2011. Archived from the original on 31 May 2016. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
  9. ↑ Fisher, Ben (February 21, 2016). "2016 JQ Wingate Prize Shortlist Announcement". Jewish Quarterly. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
  10. ↑ Alison Pick: Biography. University of Toronto.
  11. ↑ Alison Pick: Awards and Honours. University of Toronto.
  12. ↑ Alison Pick – The Mind's Eye Archived 2010-05-28 at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ↑ "The Giller Prize expands its jury to five people ", The Globe and Mail, 14 Jan 2015.
  14. ↑ "Political activist, broadcaster and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress wins 2011 Canadian Jewish Book Award" (PDF) (Press release). Koffler Centre of the Arts. 2011-04-21. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-05-16.
  15. ↑ "Meet the winners of the 2011 Jewish Book Awards". CBC.ca. 2011-04-22. Retrieved 2011-05-16.