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Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935, Carol Shields moved to Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England, and then obtained her M.A. at the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and wrote her first novel, Small Ceremonies, in 1976. Over the next three decades, Shields would become the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels , a book of criticism on Susanna Moodie and a biography of Jane Austen. Larry's Party (1997) was the novel that followed her Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Stone Diaries. Published in several countries, it was adapted into a musical stage play, won England’s Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize), given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. Shields’s final novel, Unless, was shortlisted for the Booker, Orange and Giller prizes and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and won the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. Shields died on July 16, 2003, from complications of breast cancer, at age 68.
Marjorie Anderson met Carol Shields in the 1980s when both were teaching at the University of Manitoba. She is the seventh of eight children born to Asdis and Thorsteinn Anderson, Icelandic-Canadian fishers, farmers and storytellers from the hamlet of Libau on the edges of Lake Winnipeg. She has a PhD in literature and taught for seven years in the English department at the University of Manitoba before moving to the School of Business, where she became director of the communications programs for commerce and MBA students. She was awarded the university’s Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has taught in international programs. She recently gave up full-time teaching to spend more time on literary projects and continues to run a communication consultancy for academic and corporate clients. She and her husband live in Winnipeg and enjoy spending time with their four daughters and several grandchildren. Anderson's lifelong interest in writing and storytelling, and her involvement in editing and teaching over two decades, made the task of editing Dropped Threads and Dropped Threads 2 a comfortable one. She describes her collaboration with her friend Carol Shields as a great pleasure.
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