Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy (born 1950) is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer whose fiction is noted for imaginative premises, dark comedy, and close attention to unconventional characters. Born in Windsor, Ontario, and raised in the Toronto area, she studied theatre arts and film at York University. Before establishing herself as a writer, she worked in publishing as an editor and managing editor, then as a freelance editor.

Gowdy’s first novel, Through the Green Valley, appeared in 1988. Her subsequent fiction includes Falling Angels, We So Seldom Look on Love, Mister Sandman, The White Bone, The Romantic, and Helpless. Library and Archives Canada records her career’s international publishing reach as well as adaptations of her work. Her 2017 novel Little Sister follows Rose Bowan, whose experiences during thunderstorms unsettle the boundaries between her own consciousness and another woman’s life; the novel also considers memory, guilt, dementia, and family relationships.

Gowdy received the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award in 1996 and the Trillium Book Award in 2008 for Helpless. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2006, in recognition of her contributions to Canadian literature, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction in 2012. Her literary papers are preserved in the Barbara Gowdy fonds at Library and Archives Canada.