Bernice Friesen trained as a printmaker at the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual art at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988 and received awards for the highest grade point average in both the Visual Arts and Fine Arts programs.
Gallery of Bernice Friesen
In 1990 Bernice Friesen graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a second degree in Education, majoring in Art. She took creative writing courses and attended the Banff Writing Studio.
Bernice Friesen trained as a printmaker at the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual art at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988 and received awards for the highest grade point average in both the Visual Arts and Fine Arts programs.
In 1990 Bernice Friesen graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a second degree in Education, majoring in Art. She took creative writing courses and attended the Banff Writing Studio.
(Bernice Friesen’s debut collection of short fiction earne...)
Bernice Friesen’s debut collection of short fiction earned her the 1996 Vicky Metcalf Short Stort Award for the title story. "Friesen writes with the confidence of someone who knows she has taken full advantage of hindsight." Quill & Quire.
(An epic novel of a boy's coming of age through the religi...)
An epic novel of a boy's coming of age through the religious, political and family conflict that his half-Irish, half-English heritage - and the complex characters of his relatives - create. In 1965, James, a half-English, half-Irish boy, is taken by his mother on a visit home to her Irish village after years of alienation from her family.
Bernice Friesen is a Canadian author. She is known for her children's fiction, short stories and poetry.
Background
Ethnicity:
Bernice Friesen is Ukrainian on her mother's side and Dutch Mennonite on her father's. Three of her grandparents were born in the Ukraine.
Bernice Friesen was born in 1966 in Rosthern, Saskatchewan to the family of farmers James H. Friesen and Margaret Labach. She grew up on her grandparents’ Henry and Sarah Friesen’s homestead.
Education
Bernice Friesen trained as a printmaker at the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual art at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988 and received awards for the highest grade point average in both the Visual Arts and Fine Arts programs. In 1990 she graduated with a second degree in Education, majoring in Art. She took a creative writing course with Elizabeth Brewster, and in 1998 attended the Banff Writing Studio.
After odd jobs such as being a waitress, art studio lab assistant, project coordinator at AKA Gallery, Saskatoon, odd-bod temp at Lloyds of London, England, and singing telegram girl, Bernice Friesen got her first professional job as an art gallery educator in Estevan, Saskatchewan. She has also helped to mismanage a group home for adults with mental disabilities, taught Sage Hill Writing Experience for teens, and done a little editing and commercial writing. She has produced six works of art for the covers of Coteau’s Open Eye poetry series, and her fiction and poetry has been published in anthologies and magazines in Canada and Europe.
The title story of her first book, The Seasons are Horses (1995), won the Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in Canada. Her book of poetry Sex, Death and Naked Men came out in 1998.
Friesen wants to write big lush books that a reader can get lost in and regret the passing of the pages. She has been working on several novels recently, as well as a few odd poems, and a computer art project, a magazine satire called WOM.
Quotations:
“I am glad to be born in this century.”
Membership
Saskatchewan Writers Guild
,
Canada
Saskatchewan Society for Education Through Art
,
Canada
Writers' Union of Canada
,
Canada
Personality
Bernice Friesen has traveled in the British Isles, and in France, Italy, Greece, Korea, Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, Mexico, The Cook Islands, Fiji, the United States, and every province in Canada. She has taught herself to read French and Italian and is currently trying to understand quantum physics.