Background
Merilyn Simonds was born on September 25, 1949, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Junior Robert and Alice Isabel (Elder) Simonds.
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
Merilyn Simonds
1151 Richmond St, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada
In 1971, Simonds received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario.
(Merilyn Mohr has created a complete introduction to the a...)
Merilyn Mohr has created a complete introduction to the art of home soapmaking - a craft that appeals both to our sense of economy and to our sense of simple esthetics.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092065603X/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(A dazzling blend of historical detective work and imagina...)
A dazzling blend of historical detective work and imaginative recreation, The Convict Lover takes the reader on a haunting, unforgettable journey through the world of Canada’s oldest, most notorious prison and the people who lived in its shadow.
https://www.amazon.com/Convict-Lover-True-Story-ebook/dp/B015EPN5IY/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(All the instructions, strategies, and tactics for every f...)
All the instructions, strategies, and tactics for every family's favorite games in one authoritative, fully illustrated volume, including more than 40 games not in the original edition and an entire new chapter on the African board game, Mancale. Much more than a compilation of rote instructions, the lively text captures the rich lore and history behind games.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576300587/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(Night, for most of human history, has been feared and mal...)
Night, for most of human history, has been feared and maligned. Daytime’s dark, secret sister is a time for staying in and saying prayers to ward off whatever evils lurk in its sunless corridors. And yet, darkness is revered as the almost universal murk from which life arose. Night brings together an international roster of writers who explore the many faces of night: its myths, its flora and fauna, its human side, too. Galileo ruminates on the moon over Florence, following its path through one of the first telescopes.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1553653963/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(Part travelogue, part exploration, part mid-winter love s...)
Part travelogue, part exploration, part mid-winter love story told with wit and acuity by one of Canada’s most engaging literary couples, Breakfast at the Exit Cafe is a journey into the reality behind the cultural myth that is America.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0049H9BZU/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(Alyson Thomson has left the city for a simpler life on an...)
Alyson Thomson has left the city for a simpler life on an abandoned farm with her lover, Walker, a potter. Wandering there, she uncovers, in the ruins of a log cabin, the writings of a young woman who lived more than a hundred years before. Into Alyson's story Merilyn Simonds weaves the moving tale of Margaret MacBayne, who, with her family, left behind hardship in a seaside Scottish town in the hope of building a new home in the Canadian wilderness.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0053GMM5C/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(A New Leaf traces a year of growing seasons at The Leaf, ...)
A New Leaf traces a year of growing seasons at The Leaf, Merilyn Simonds' acreage in eastern Ontario. A lifelong gardener, Simonds works the soil and the soul for wide-ranging revelations about everything from flowers that keep time, to the strange gift of compost, to great gardens of the world, to things lost and found underground.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GTLKE6/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(The Lion in the Room Next Door dances the line between fi...)
The Lion in the Room Next Door dances the line between fiction and memoir, crystallizing moments from one woman’s life as she travels through childhood, marriage, and motherhood to the true love that may come after.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015254VUC/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(On the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ann sells her wo...)
On the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ann sells her worldly possessions and sets off to visit seven people she has never met. Originally published in the anthology Seventeen Women Undress a Man, published in Germany (2005) and in The Netherlands (2007), this story was published in Dutch in Vrij Nederland (2006) and in English in The Walrus (2005), where it won the Silver Award for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0158Q7WPG/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(The Paradise Project explores in 17 short-short stories t...)
The Paradise Project explores in 17 short-short stories the human response to the planted world. Meet the minor diplomat who populates the earth with his lurid purple-fruited plant; the woman encased in a circling bower; the artist who paints a garden for love; the writer who adds a goldfish to a stranger's sidewalk idyll; the couple who contentedly care for a father's garden until Will comes along. Erotic, exotic, suffused with startling colour and heady scent, grounded in dark shadows and decomposing duff, The Paradise Project ensures you will never look at gardens the same way again.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01591BR1K/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(Gutenberg’s Fingerprint trolls the past, present, and evo...)
Gutenberg’s Fingerprint trolls the past, present, and evolving future of the book in search of an answer. Part memoir and part philosophical and historical exploration, the book finds its muse in Hugh Barclay, who produces gorgeous books on a hand-operated antique letterpress. As Simonds works alongside this born-again Gutenberg, and with her son to develop a digital edition of the same book, her assumptions about reading, writing, the nature of creativity, and the value of imperfection are toppled.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M34GEMI/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great e...)
After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great events in New York City, Mexico, and Montreal, 96-year-old Cassandra MacCallum is surviving well enough, alone on her island, when a young Burmese woman contacts her, claiming to be kin.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DWFPZTL/?tag=2022091-20
2018
Merilyn Simonds was born on September 25, 1949, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Junior Robert and Alice Isabel (Elder) Simonds.
In 1971, Simonds received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario.
Merilyn Simonds began as a freelance journalist, publishing nine nonfiction books and scores of magazine articles on subjects ranging from the environment to soap-making, from art and architecture to war. From 1987 to 1991 she was an associate editor at Harrowsmith Magazine and has been a contributing editor at Harrowsmith, Equinox, Canadian Geographic and Saturday Night Magazines. With the release of The Convict Lover in 1996, she became nationally-known as a literary writer, exploring the zone where fact and fiction meet.
The Lion in the Room Next Door, Simonds’s collection of linked, autobiographical stories, was published in 1999 to enthusiastic reviews and like The Convict Lover, became a national bestseller. The following year, it was released by Bloomsbury in England, G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the United States and btb Verlag in Germany. The Holding, Simonds’s first novel, was published in 2004 to unanimously favorable reviews and spent five months on the Canadian Booksellers’ Association bestseller list. The novel appeared in Germany in 2007.
In 2005, her short story Miss You Already was published in Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada. Her short fiction has been anthologized internationally and was included in a special 2009 issue of Journal of the Americas on Canadian literature and art. In 2010, she published Breakfast at the Exit Café: Travels in America, a travel memoir co-written with her husband, Wayne Grady.
In the spring of 2009, Simonds launched a weekly essay on her website frugalistagardener.com. These were collected in 2011 and published as A New Leaf: Growing with my Garden. Simonds has edited two anthologies: A Literary Companion to Gardens (2008) and A Literary Companion to the Night (2009). She has been writer-in-residence at Green College, University of British Columbia, and at the Whistler Vicious Circle.
Simonds is a teacher of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She also privately mentors writers working in both fiction and creative nonfiction. She writes a monthly column, AboutBooks, in the Kingston Whig-Standard and is Artistic Director of Kingston WritersFest. In 2012, she published The Paradise Project, as a handmade book printed with a hand-operated 19th-century press on paper made in part from plants in her garden.
Simonds’ other books include The Lion in the Room Next Door; a bestselling novel, The Holding; a travel memoir, Breakfast at the Exit Café co-written with her husband Wayne Grady; and a collection of personal essays, A New Leaf.
(All the instructions, strategies, and tactics for every f...)
1997(A dazzling blend of historical detective work and imagina...)
1996(After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great e...)
2018(Part travelogue, part exploration, part mid-winter love s...)
2010(The Lion in the Room Next Door dances the line between fi...)
2015(Merilyn Mohr has created a complete introduction to the a...)
1989(On the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ann sells her wo...)
2015(Alyson Thomson has left the city for a simpler life on an...)
2011(Gutenberg’s Fingerprint trolls the past, present, and evo...)
2017(This anthology brings together the best gardening essays ...)
2008(A New Leaf traces a year of growing seasons at The Leaf, ...)
2011(The Paradise Project explores in 17 short-short stories t...)
2015(Night, for most of human history, has been feared and mal...)
2009As a writer, Merilyn Simonds refuses categorization, exploring whatever form a story seems to require: short and long fiction, creative nonfiction, historical nonfiction, children’s literature, drama, fable, hybrid forms that have no names.
On July 7, 1995, Merilyn married Wayne Grady, an author. They have two children: Karl Jurgenson Mohr and Erik Robert Franz Mohr.