Carol Ann Shields (born as Warner; June 2, 1935 – July 16, 2003) was an author of books and short stories. She was born in the United States but lived in Canada. She is most famous for her book The Stone Diaries, which was published in 1993. This book won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award in Canada.
Early life and education
Carol Ann Warner was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She attended Hanover College in Indiana, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1957. During her time there, she joined the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. A scholarship from the United Nations helped her study abroad at the University of Exeter in England from 1955 to 1956. Later, she completed graduate studies at the University of Ottawa, where she received a master’s degree in 1975.
In 1955, during a study week in Scotland sponsored by the British Council, she met Donald Hugh Shields, a Canadian engineering student. The couple married in 1957 and moved to Canada, where they had one son and four daughters. Shields became a Canadian citizen later in her life.
Career
In 1973, Shields became an editorial assistant for the journal Canadian Slavonic Papers while living in Ottawa from 1968 to 1978. Her first novel, Small Ceremonies, was published in 1976, followed by The Box Garden in 1977. That year, she worked as a part-time teacher in the English Department at the University of Ottawa. She taught Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia while living in Vancouver from 1978 to 1980.
Shields' third novel, Happenstance, was published in 1980. That year, she and her husband moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, after he was hired to teach at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Engineering. It was in Winnipeg that Shields wrote her more well-known books.
From the fall of 1982 onward, Shields taught in the English Department at the University of Manitoba, first as an Assistant Professor (1982–1992), then as an Associate Professor (1992–1995). She published the novel Swann in 1987 and The Republic of Love in 1992. The Stone Diaries (1993) won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1993 Governor General’s Award, the only book to ever receive both. It also won the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 and was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1993. The Stone Diaries was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and chosen as a "Notable Book" by The New York Times Book Review, which said, "The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters."
Shields became a Full Professor of English in 1995 and, in 1996, became chancellor of the University of Winnipeg.
Shields wrote several short story collections, including Various Miracles (1985), The Orange Fish (1989), and Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000). She received a Canada Council Major Award, two National Magazine Awards, the 1990 Marian Engel Award, the Canadian Authors Award, and a CBC short story award. She was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1998 and became a companion of the Order in 2002. Shields was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Manitoba.
Carol Shields won the 1998 Orange Prize for Fiction for her 1997 novel Larry’s Party. Her last novel, Unless (2002), was nominated for the 2002 Giller Prize, the Governor General of Canada Literary Award, the Booker Prize, and the 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction. It won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. In 2000, after retiring, Shields became Professor Emerita at the University of Manitoba. That year, she and her husband moved to Victoria, British Columbia, after his retirement.
Shields also studied the works of Jane Austen. She wrote the biography Jane Austen, which won the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction in April 2002. Her daughter, Meg, accepted the award on her behalf in Toronto on April 22, 2002.
Her last novel, Unless, includes a strong defense of female writers who write about "domestic" subjects.
Carol Shields wrote plays, including Departures and Arrivals, which has been performed hundreds of times by amateur and professional theaters. Other well-known plays include Thirteen Hand (1993), Fashion, Power, Guilt, and the Charity of Families (co-authored with her daughter Catherine Shields) (1995), and Unless (co-authored with her daughter Sara Cassidy) (2005). Collections of poems by Shields were published in 1972 (Others), 1974 (Intersect), and 1992 (Coming to Canada).
Two collections of essays written by women about things they were not told became best sellers in Canada. Dropped Threads (2001) and Dropped Threads 2 (2003) were edited by Shields and her friend and colleague Marjorie Anderson.
Death and legacy
Carol Shields passed away in 2003 from breast cancer at the age of 68 in Victoria. After her death, six of her short stories were adapted by Shaftesbury Films into a dramatic anthology series called The Shields Stories. Her earlier short story collections were republished as Collected Stories of Carol Shields in 2005. Films based on her novels include Swann (1996) and The Republic of Love (2003). Her final novel, Unless, was adapted into a play in 2016 by Alan Gilsenan.
Shields' eldest daughter, Anne Giardini, is also a writer. Giardini has written for the National Post as a columnist and has published her first novel, The Sad Truth About Happiness. Her second novel, Advice for Italian Boys, was published in 2009. Giardini and her son, Nicholas, edited a book of Shields' thoughts and advice on writing, Startle and Illuminate, which was published in 2016.
Shields' youngest daughter, Sara Cassidy, has written many children's books and young adult novels, including Slick (2010), Windfall (2011), A Boy Named Queen (2016), and Nevers (2019), which was nominated for the Governor General's Award for young people's literature.
In 2020, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was created as a new literary award to honor writing by Canadian and American women and non-binary authors. In 2022, Shields was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame after she died for her contributions as an author.