Isabel Huggan

Isabel Huggan (b. 1943, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada), is a prize-winning Canadian author of fiction and personal essays.

Biography

Isabel Huggan spent her childhood in Elmira, a small southern Ontario town where her father worked as a manager for the Canadian branch of an American chemical company. She studied English and Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario and in 1965 moved to Toronto to work in publishing. She spent a year traveling in Europe, then returned to Canada and began teaching English, Theatre and Creative Writing in Ontario high schools.

In 1970 she married journalist Robert Huggan. They lived in Toronto for two years and then bought an old farm house in Belleville in eastern Ontario. She worked as a reporter, photographer and columnist for the local newspaper, The Intelligencer. In 1977 she gave birth to a daughter. She began publishing poetry and short stories in Canadian literary magazines.

In 1976 Isabel Huggan won first prize in a National Film Board of Canada contest for women scriptwriters for a film script based on her short story “Celia Behind Me”. She contributed two further stories about the character Elizabeth for an anthology (First Impressions, Oberon Press, 1980). Another was published in Best Canadian Stories a year later. In 1980, the family moved to Ottawa and, in 1987, to Kenya, where Bob Huggan worked in communications at an agricultural research institute. The posting was extended by a year and followed by a three-year assignment to France and then a five-year job in the Philippines. During this time, Huggan produced a second collection of short stories, , which won praise internationally.

Huggan continued to give writing workshops on her return visits to Canada and also taught in France, Switzerland, the Philippines, Australia and Hong Kong. In 1998 she joined the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, teaching at summer workshops and mentoring by correspondence. The same year, Huggan and her husband settled in the south of France where they had renovated an old stone house during summer holidays in the years spent in the Philippines. In 2003, after several weeks of travel promoting her book at literary festivals in Canada, Huggan suffered a subdural haematoma and underwent neurosurgery in France, a successful operation that prevented any serious consequences. In 2004, after a promotional trip to Australia and Canada, she again fell ill, with a pulmonary embolism complicated by pleurisy. In the spring of 2005, a meningioma (tumour on the surface of the brain) was removed with no complications. She has returned to good health.

In addition to writing, she continues to teach at workshops and schools. She writes and publishes poetry, book reviews, and newspaper travel articles, and contributes to literary journals and anthologies.

Writing

The complete eight stories tracing the growth of Elizabeth Kessler over a ten-year period was published as The Elizabeth Stories by Oberon Press in 1984, and was well received by critics in Canada. A television film was made of one of the stories, “Jack of Hearts”, by Atlantis Films. In 1987, The Elizabeth Stories was published in Great Britain and the United States, where it won the Quality Paperback New Voice Award in 1988 as well as the Best Fiction Prize from the Denver Quarterly. Huggan’s reputation began to grow internationally. The Elizabeth Stories has been translated into French and Spanish: several stories are anthologized in Dutch and Italian as well as in English-language anthologies used in secondary schools and universities.

All but two stories of the collection You Never Know (Knopf Canada and Penguin USA, also translated into French) focus on adult experience, and the various settings—Scotland, France, Canada and Kenya—reflect Huggan’s expanding view of the world and of human nature.

The process of settling into a new country, learning another language and culture (at the same time as retaining her Canadian identity) forms the basis for Huggan’s third book, a mix of memoir and fiction, published in 2003 by Knopf Canada (and in 2004 by Random House Australia) as Belonging: Home Away From Home. It received extremely favorable attention from critics and the public. In April 2004, it was awarded the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction in Canada, and in Australia was for some time on the bestseller list.

Isabel Huggan’s stories have been included in a number of anthologies. Her work appears in Canadian periodicals including Books in Canada, BRICK, Canadian House & Home, Chatelaine, GEO Canada, Harrowsmith, Quarry, The New Quarterly, among others. In the U.S. her work has appeared in Utne Reader and Confetti; in Denmark, Kunapipi; in Australia, in Eureka Street and Meanjin, and in Britain, in Good Housekeeping and Women & Home Magazine.

The Atlantis/National Film Board television film Jack of Hearts was based on her short story of the same name from The Elizabeth Stories.

Published works

• Belonging: Home Away from Home (memoir and fiction)
  • Canada: Alfred A. Knopf Canada Ltd. (2003) Vintage (2004)
  • Australia: Random House (2004)

• You Never Know (short stories)
  • Canada: Alfred A. Knopf Canada Ltd. (1993)
  • United States: Viking Penguin Ltd. (1993)
  • Quebec: translated as On Ne Sait Jamais, L’Instant Même (1996)

• The Elizabeth Stories (short stories)
  • Canada: Oberon Press (1984) & HarperCollins Canada Ltd. (1991)
  • United States: Viking Penguin Inc. (1987)
  • Great Britain: Viking Penguin Ltd. (1987)
  • France: translated as L’Echappée Belle: Gallimard (1990)
  • Spain: translated as En El Corazon Del Bosque: Editorial Lumen (1999)

Awards

• Charles Taylor Literary Non-Fiction Prize, Canada, 2004
• Calliope Award for Outstanding Writing & Teaching, Humber College, Toronto, 2003
• Joe Savago New Voice Award, Quality Paperback Book Club, New York, 1988
• Best Fiction of the Year Award, The Denver Quarterly, Denver, 1988
• Annual Prize for Fiction, Carleton University, Ottawa, 1979
• First Prize, National Film Board Contest for Short Film Scripts by Women, 1977

References

• http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/04/19/Arts/hugganCTwin20040419.html

• http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2004/winner2004.asp

• http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=1032&L=H

• http://www.umanitoba.ca/canlit/conference/robert_schuleroutsider.shtml