Eden
Robinson
Eden Robinson is a novelist and short fiction writer from the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. Her debut collection of stories, Traplines, won Britain’s Winifred Holtby Prize in 1997. Her first novel, Monkey Beach, which combines contemporary realism with Haisla mysticism, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and a Governor General’s Literary Award, and received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her 2017 novel, Son of a Trickster, the first volume in a projected trilogy, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Robinson gave the 2010 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture, which was published as the memoir The Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols & Modern Storytelling. She is a recipient of the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award and the University of Victoria’s Distinguished Alumni Award. She has been a Writer-in-Residence at the Whitehorse Public Library, and works with the Writers in Electronic Residence program, which links schools across the country with professional writers. Robinson lives in Kitamaat Village, BC.
Award History
2016 Winner
Writers’ Trust Engel Findley AwardJury Citation
“Eden Robinson is a master storyteller with an instantly recognizable style and a capacious sensibility that encompasses everything from traditional Haisla teachings to contemporary youth culture. Her vision is unflinching, her obsessions sometimes brutal, her observations visceral, yet at the same time all of her work is suffused with a deep empathy for her characters, and spiced by a tricksterish sense of humour that opens up new ways of understanding this land and its beautiful, damaged people. In a world where the legacies of colonial violence are alive and present every day, Robinson’s work resonates with crucial political and ethical questions that everyone needs to consider. This is vital, engaged, and artful writing that sticks in the memory and makes us think again about who, and where, we are.”
— 2016 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award Jury (Warren Cariou, Annabel Lyon, Linda Spalding)
