1. Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, and Women Talking.
18 Facts About Miriam Toews
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Miriam Toews had a leading role in the feature film Silent Light, written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that informed her fifth novel, Irma Voth.
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Miriam Toews grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada the second daughter of Mennonite parents, both part of the Kleine Gemeinde.
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Miriam Toews left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal and London before settling in Winnipeg.
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Miriam Toews wrote her first novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck, while working as a freelance journalist.
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The novel was developed from a documentary that Miriam Toews was preparing for CBC Radio on the subject of welfare mothers.
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Miriam Toews won the latter prize with her second novel, A Boy of Good Breeding.
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Miriam Toews has written for CBC's WireTap, Canadian Geographic, Geist, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Intelligent Life, and Saturday Night.
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Miriam Toews is the author of The X Letters, a series of personal dispatches addressed to the father of her son, which were featured on This American Life in an episode about missing parents.
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Miriam Toews's death inspired Toews to write a memoir in her father's voice, Swing Low: A Life.
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Miriam Toews's world is transformed when a filmmaker from Mexico City arrives to make a film about Mennonites.
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Miriam Toews has said that Irma Voth was inspired in part by her experience in playing a lead role in Silent Light, the 2007 film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas.
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Reygadas invited Miriam Toews to do a screen test for the role of Esther, a conservative Mennonite wife, after reading her third novel, A Complicated Kindness, and seeing her author photo on the back flap of the book.
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Miriam Toews worked with her mother, a native speaker of Plautdietsch, to deliver her lines phonetically.
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Miriam Toews was nominated for Best Actress at Mexico's Ariel Awards for her performance, one of nine nominations for the film.
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Miriam Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her only sibling Marjorie.
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Miriam Toews was an active and well-respected elementary school teacher who lobbied to establish Steinbach's first public library.
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Miriam Toews' partner is Erik Rutherford, the screenwriter for the 2021 film Charlotte.