Naomi K. Lewis
Naomi K. Lewis (born 1976) is a Canadian fiction and nonfiction writer who resides in Calgary. She is the winner of the 2012 Colophon Prize.[1]
Life and career
Lewis was born in London, England, and grew up near Washington, DC and in Ottawa. She lived in Toronto, Fredericton and Edmonton, and completed degrees in philosophy and English literature, before settling in Calgary.[2]
Work
Lewis’s first novel, Cricket in a Fist, was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2008. Cricket in a Fist follows two sisters searching for their mother, who has left the family to start a self-help movement called “willing amnesia.”[3] Lewis then co-wrote In Case of Fire, the bestselling 2010 memoir of Edmonton burn survivor and workplace safety advocate Spencer Beach. In Case of Fire recounts Beach’s youth, focusing on the attitudes he believes led him to the workplace fire that almost killed him; his years-long recovery; and his resolve to rebuild himself as a professional speaker, with the aim of helping other workers avoid preventable workplace accidents.[4] Lewis and Beach met by chance in an elevator. Lewis’s story, “The Guiding Light” won the 2007 Fiddlehead fiction contest and appeared in the McClelland and Stewart’s 2008 Journey Prize Anthology.[5][6] Lewis' collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of won the 2012 Colophon Prize, which the publisher Enfield & Wizenty awards to the best unpublished manuscript with “literary and commercial appeal.” The book’s eight short stories and one novella follow characters haunted by long-ago decisions, loves and grudges— a grad student who impersonated a high school classmate in Internet pornography, a man who gave his eyeball to a former lover, a woman bent on finally outdoing her sister by skydiving from space.[7] Previous recipients of this award have included Michelle Berry and W.P. Kinsella. In 2011, Lewis served as the Calgary Public Library's Writer in Residence.[8]
Lewis is associate editor at Alberta Views magazine,[9] and her article “The Urge to Purge,” about detox diets, was shortlisted for a 2011 Canadian National Magazine Award. With Calgary writer Rona Altrows, she edited an anthology of essays and poetry about shyness, published by the University of Alberta Press in 2013.[10]
References
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