Madeleine Thien

Who is Madeleine Thien?

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist.

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, she was educated at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Thien was a finalist for Writers' Trust of Canada's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 1999, and in 2001 she was awarded the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award for most promising Canadian writer under age 30. In 2008, she was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Thien's first book, Simple Recipes, a collection of short stories, received the City of Vancouver Book Award, the VanCity Book Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her novel, Certainty, has been published internationally and translated into 16 languages. It won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Ovid Festival Prize and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction.

Her fourth book, a novel entitled Dogs at the Perimeter, was published by McClelland & Stewart in May, 2011 and was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. The novel was subsequently published by Granta Books in 2012 and translated in 8 languages.