Anne Marie Macdonald

Photo from Random House New Faces of Fiction

When Fall on Your Knees was published in 1996, Toronto actor and playwright Anne-Marie Macdonald became an instant sensation. Though the plot of this debut novel is horrifying at times, the tale is told with such evident truthfulness that the reader has no choice but to willingly suspend disbelief and follow the story from Syria to Cape Breton to New York and back.

Fall on Your Knees was selected for Canada Reads in 2010. In 1997, it was short-listed for the Giller, the Trillium Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Orange Prize (UK) and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The book won the CAA Harlequin Literary Award, the Dartmouth Book Award and the Commonwealth Prize for First Fiction.

Her second book, The Way the Crow Flies, also received high praise. In this story, a child protagonist is threatened by both local misdeeds and global politics. This was also nominated for the Giller Prize, and is reviewed here in the Guardian.

Macdonald appeared at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt a few years back to read. When asked where she got her ideas, this poised young woman said they simply came to her. The darkness of her stories, she assured the audience, had nothing to do with her childhood, which was normal and pleasant.

Anne Marie Macdonald's play, Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet (Vintage 1998) won the Governor General's Award for Drama and the Chalmers Award for Outstanding Play. The play Belle Moral, was produced in 2008 at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-theLake. Macdonald has also written opera librettos.