Shields, Carol, 1935-2003 : Novelist, story writer, poet and playwright, Carol Shields (née Warner) was born in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois in 1935. She began writing at an early age, producing articles and sonnets for her high-school paper and literary journal. Shields studied at Hanover College, Indiana (B.A. 1957) and the University of Exeter in England. She married Donald Hugh Shields in 1957, a Canadian also studying in England. They moved to Canada and raised five children. Shields received her M.A. in English from the University of Ottawa in 1975. Shields taught at the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Manitoba, where she was a faculty member in the English Department until 1999.
Carol Shields' poetic works include Others (1972), Intersect (1974), and Coming to Canada (1992), though she is best known as a novelist. Her first novel, Small Ceremonies, won the Canadian Author's Association Award for best novel of 1977. Other novels include The Box Garden (1977), Happenstance (1980), A Fairly Conventional Woman (1982), Swann: A Mystery (1987), The Republic of Love (1992), The Stone Diaries (1993), Larry's Party (1997) and Unless (2002). Shields also co-wrote A Celibate Season (1991) with friend Blanche Howard.
Shields wrote short stories consistently for publication in magazines over the course of her career. Her stories were collected into Various Miracles (1985), The Orange Fish (1990) and Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000) and her Collected Stories was published in 2005.
Shields also wrote several successful dramatic works, including "Departures and Arrivals", "Anniversary" co-written with David Williamson, "Fashion, Power Guilt and the Charity of Families" co-written with daughter Catherine, and "Thirteen Hands" (1993) which premièred at Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange in 1993, and was co-produced by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto in 1997. She collaborated on a script with Patrick Crowe on Susanna Moodie. Shields wrote a section of the dance theatre piece "Mortality" (other authors were Tomson Highway, Paul Quarrington and Stephen Dobyns) and she was working on a stage version of Unless at the time of her death in 2003.
With Marjorie Anderson, Shields co-edited Dropped Threads I (2001) and Dropped Threads II (2003): anthologies of stories and essays by women. Shields also wrote a biography: Jane Austen (2001).
Shields became the fifth Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg in 1996, a post she occupied until 2000. She was also a member of the Canada Council (1993-1997).
Early in her career (1970), Shields received the Marion Engel Award for a Canadian woman writer. She won a Governor General's Literary Award (1993), National Book Critics Circle Award (1994) and the Pulitzer Prize (1995) for The Stone Diaries; and was short-listed for the Giller Prize (1997) and won the Orange Prize (1998) and the Prix de Lire in France (1998) for Larry's Party. In 2002, Unless was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotia Bank/Giller Prize, and won the Ethel Wilson Prize for best British Columbia fiction of the year; in 2003 Unless was short-listed Fiction Book of the Year, Canadian Booksellers Association and for the Orange Prize. Shields was nominated to the Order of Canada in July 1998 and named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada that same year. She was named Chevalier dans l'ordres des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France in 2000, in 2001 she was awarded the Order of Manitoba, and in 2002 she was elevated to Companion of the Order of Canada, awarded the Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Medal and won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for Jane Austen. She was named Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2003. Unless was ranked in the top 10 of a list of Britain's all-time best loved books by women.
Carol Shields received honourary degrees from the University of Ottawa (1995), Hanover College (1996), Queen's University (1996), University of Winnipeg (1996), University of British Columbia (1996), University of Western Ontario (1997), University of Toronto (1998), Concordia University (1998), Carleton University (2000), Wilfred Laurier University (2000), Lakehead University (2001), University of Victoria (2001), University of Calgary (2001), University of Manitoba (2003) and Malaspina University and College (2003).
A Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded to Carol Shields in 1999. The Shields' spent the next year in England, allowing her to research Jane Austen and complete her final novel Unless. While in England, She visited the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough and accepted an invitation to write a play for the SJT. As her health deteriorated, she asked her daughter Sara Cassidy to help her write the stage version ss. She died before it was finished and the work was completed by Sara. Unless: The Play was produced in Scarborough as well as in Toronto and Vancouver in 2005 and Victoria in 2006.
Shortly before her death, Shields was working on a novel which was published posthumously as the short story "Segue" in The Collected Stories (2005).
The Shields lived in Vancouver, British Columbia (1957), Toronto, Ontario (1958-1960, 1964-1968), Manchester, England (1960-1963), Ottawa, Ontario (1968-1978), Vancouver (1978-1980), Winnipeg, Manitoba (1980-2000), and Victoria, British Columbia (2000-2003). Year-long sabbatical leaves were taken in Saint Brieuc, on the north coast of Brittany, France (1976-77), Paris (1986-87), Berkeley, California (1993-94), and London, England (1999-2000). The longest period of residence was Winnipeg, the setting for The Republic of Love. They also maintained two holiday homes in France (first in Monjouvent, the Jura and second in La Roche Vineuse, Burgundy).
On July 16, 2003, Carol Shields died of breast cancer at home in Victoria.
Shields' work was adapted to stage and screen by her and by others. Her work was translated into many languages. She was also the subject of a Life and Times broadcast for CBC television (2001) and a film that aired on the BBC (2002).