Elisabeth Harvor

Erica Elisabeth Arendt Harvor (née Deichmann) is a Canadian novelist and poet who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, the daughter of Danish immigrants who made pottery by hand, Harvor grew up in Saint John and on the Kingston Peninsula. She married architect Stig Harvor in 1957. The couple had two sons before they divorced in 1977. Harvor enrolled at Concordia University in 1983, receiving an M.A. in creative writing in 1986. She has also won many awards for her fiction and poetry. Harvor's short story collection Let Me Be the One was a finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Literary Award. Fortress of Chairs, her first book of poems, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry written by a Canadian writer in 1992. Her second poetry book, The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring, was a finalist for the Lowther Award in 1997, and her first novel, Excessive Joy Injures the Heart, was chosen one of the ten best books of the year by The Toronto Star in 2000. Also in 2000 Harvor won the Alden Nowlan Award, in 2003 the Marian Engel Award, and in 2004 the Malahat Novella Prize for "Across Some Dark Avenue of Plot He Carried Her Body."

Bibliography

Short stories

• Women and Children (1973, revised as Our Lady of All Distances, 1991)
• If Only We Could Drive Like This Forever (1988)
• Let Me Be the One (1996, nominated for a Governor General's Award)

Poetry

• Fortress of Chairs (1992, winner of the Gerald Lampert Award)
• The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring (1997)
• An Open Door in the Landscape (2010)

Novels

• Excessive Joy Injures the Heart (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) ISBN 0-7710-3963-8
• All Times Have Been Modern (Penguin, 2004) ISBN 0-670-04440-7

Anthologies

• A Room at the Heart of Things (1998)

External links

• Elisabeth Harvor official site