Series S6 - Large Literary Projects

Diane Schoemperlen, short-story writer, novelist, teacher, editor (b. Thunder Bay, Ont. 9 July 1954). Diane Schoemperlen grew up in Thunder Bay, Ont, and attended Lakehead University. After graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor's of Art, she spent a summer studying at the Banff Centre in the Creative Writing Program where she worked with such writers as W.O. Mitchell and Alice Munroe. Schoemperlen undertook a brief journalistic career working for the CANMORE MINER and and writing for THE BANFF CRAG AND CANYON. Since 1986, she has focused on her writing career and has taught creative writing at schools such as Queen's University, St Lawrence College and the Kingston School of Writing.
Schoemperlen's first book was DOUBLE EXPOSURES (1984), and was shortly followed by her short-story collections FROGS AND OTHER STORIES in 1986 and HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA in 1987. A fourth collection of short stories, MAN OF MY DREAMS (1990) was nominated for a Governor General's Award and a Trillium Award. In 1994, Schoemperlen published her first novel, IN THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE, which was structured around the 100 stimulus words of the standard psychological Word Association Test. The novel was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and was produced as a play in both Kingston and Toronto. In 1998, Schoemperlen won the Governor General's Award for Fiction for her fifth collection of short stories FORMS OF DEVOTION (1998). Schoemperlen's published her second novel, OUR LADY OF THE LOST AND FOUND, in 2001. Returning to short stories, Schoemperlen published RED PLAID SHIRT: STORIES NEW AND COLLECTED (2003) and a non-fiction project NAMES OF THE DEAD: AN ELEGY TO VICTIMS OF SEPTEMBER 11 (2004). In 2008, Shoemperlen's third novel was published, AT A LOSS FOR WORDS.
Schoemperlen is also known for her work as an editor, having edited a collection of women's writing, VITAL SIGNS: NEW WOMEN WRITERS IN CANADA, published in 1987, and COMING ATTRACTIONS '96. She co-edited COMING ATTRACTIONS '95 with writer Douglas Glover, and THE JOURNEY PRIZE ANTHOLOGY: SHORT FICTION FROM THE BEST OF CANADA'S NEW WRITERS (2003) with Andre Alexis and Derek McCormack.
Shoemperlen currently lives and works in Kingston, Ontario.