Carol Shields

CS , an American-born Canadian novelist of the twentieth century, a low-key but passionate feminist, published a collection of poetry as her first book. Her earliest novel features as minor character a novelist whose stock-in-trade is to be Canadian but who is by birth (secretly) an American. Her novels probe the freight of meaning in the small change of ordinary lives, especially those of women, and the way that an ordinary person becomes an artist. They delight in self-reflexiveness, and combine self-conscious artistry with a disarming appearance of transcription from life. CS also wrote short fiction and plays.