Occupation novelist Role Novelist Nationality Canadian Education University of Winnipeg | Genre fiction Books Reading by Lightning Name Joan Thomas | |
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Notable works Reading by Lightning, Curiosity, The Opening Sky | ||
Evolution dialog from curiosity by joan thomas 2010 pp77 78
Joan Thomas is a Canadian novelist and book reviewer, whose debut novel Reading By Lightning won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Canada/Caribbean) as well as the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Her second novel, Curiosity was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Both novels were longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Thomas, based in Winnipeg, previously worked as a freelance journalist and book reviewer for The Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press and Prairie Fire, and as a book editor for Turnstone Press. She won a National Magazine Award in 1996 for her journalism.
Her third novel The Opening Sky (2014) was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Carol Shields Book Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. It won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and was named a CBC book of the year.
In 2014, Thomas was awarded the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for a mid-career writer.