Matt Cohen Award Winner Announced
Novelist Paul Quarrington Wins Trust of Canada Award
This award comes as a great surprise and honor, especially as Quarrington recently received the news that he is suffering from stage 4 lung cancer.
About Paul Quarrington
Paul Quarrington is a Canadian writer and musician who lives in Toronto. Among the many credentials to his name, Quarrington is perhaps best known for his fictional novels Whale Music and King Leary. Whale Music, which was hailed as “the greatest rock 'n rock novel ever written”, won the 1989 Governor General Award for fiction. King Leary received the Stephen Leacock Award for Humor in 1988 and the Canada Reads Award in 2008.
Quarrington has also made a name for himself in the music, theatre and film industries. His big screen adaptation of Whale Music was nominated for numerous Genie Awards and his screenplay, Perfectly Normal combined the Canadian love of hockey with grand opera. Quarrington has also worked as a writer on such shows as Due South, Power Play and Moose TV and his band, Porkbelly Futures, released their second album in 2008.
Quarrington was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, the most serious stage of lung cancer, in June 2009. However, this did not defer him, as soon after he was diagnosed, he went on tour with his band Porkbelly Futures across Canada’s east coast. In September, Quarrington was quoted saying, “I guess, to some extent, I’m just trying to get a lot in. One year isn’t any less beautiful than 30 years.”
Celebrating the Life of Paul Quarrington
Quarrington can now add the Matt Cohen Award to his long list of accomplishments. He will be presented with the award on October 24th. The ceremony will take place during Harbourfront’s International Festival of Authors and will be called “Paul Quarrington: A Life in Music, Words and on Screen.” Canadian novelists Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Alistair MacLeod and Paul Gross are expected to speak and Quarrington’s band Porkbelly Futures will perform during the event.
About the Matt Cohen Award
The Matt Cohen Award was named after the late Canadian author Matt Cohen, who wrote Elizabeth and After and Emotional Arithmetic. Cohen lost his battle with lung cancer in 1999 and the Matt Cohen Award - A Celebration of a Writing Life was established in 2000 by the Writers Trust of Canada. The winner of this prestigious award receives $20,000 in prize money and some winners of the past include Mavis Gallant, Janet Lunn and Sylvia Fraser.
The evening will be a fitting celebration of an excellent name in Canadian literature.
Quarrington Hard at Work
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