18 Facts About Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories.

Jane Urquhart was born June 21,1949, in Little Longlac, a small mining town in northern Ontario.

Jane Urquhart is the daughter of a mining engineer, Walter Andrew Carter, and Marian Quinn.

Jane Urquhart attended John Ross Robertson Public School until the end of Grade Seven, moving to Havergal College, a private school for girls, for grades eight to twelve.

In 1968, Jane Urquhart married Paul Keele who was then a student at the Ontario College of Art, and later at the Nova Scotia College of Art and design.

Jane Urquhart worked as an assistant to the information officer for the Royal Canadian Navy while Keele was still in school.

Tragically, Keele died in a car accident in 1973 when Jane Urquhart was only 24.

In 1976, Jane Urquhart married the Canadian visual artist Tony Jane Urquhart.

At the time, Tony Jane Urquhart had four children from a previous marriage, so the couple's early years together were filled with children and family life.

Jane Urquhart owned an Irish-style cottage in McGillicuddy Reeks from 1996 to 2013 which she used as a writing retreat and an occasional home.

Jane Urquhart is the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass, and four books of poetry, I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan, and Some Other Garden.

Jane Urquhart wrote the biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery for the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians series and is the editor of the most recent Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, and she edited and introduced a collection of Alice Munro's love stories entitled No Love Lost for The New Canadian Library.

Jane Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award and the Harbourfront Festival Prize, and is a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Jane Urquhart has received numerous honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto, the Royal Military College, and Carleton University, Ottawa.

Jane Urquhart has been writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and, during the winter and spring of 1997, she held the Presidential Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Jane Urquhart has given readings and lectures in Canada, Britain, Europe, the US, and Australia, has twice been a keynote speaker at the annual Canadian Congress of the Humanities, and has served on the Board of PEN Canada and on the Advisory Board for the Restoration of the Vimy Memorial.

Jane Urquhart has served on several international prize juries including that of the International Dublin IMPAC Award, the Giller Prize, and the American International Neustadt Award.

Jane Urquhart's books have been published in many countries, including Holland, France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, Australia, and The United States, and have been translated into several languages.