Laurence, Margaret

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Laurence, Margaret

1926-1987

Margaret Laurence, noted Canadian author, was born Jean Margaret Wemyss in Neepawa, Manitoba on 18 July 1926. She was educated at the University of Manitoba. In 1947 she married John Laurence and they had two children, Jocelyn and David. In 1949, they moved to England and then Africa, where they lived in Somalia and Ghana. The Laurences separated in 1962, and divorced in 1969. During this time she returned to Canada, living in Vancouver, before going back to England, first to London, and then to Elm Cottage in Buckinghamshire. In the early 1970s, she accepted a position of writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, and settled in Lakefield, Ontario. In 1986, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away, in her home in Lakefield, 5 January 1987.

Laurence twice won the Governor General's Award for fiction, as well as many other literary awards. Her best known works are The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), The Fire Dwellers (1969), A Bird in the House (1970), The Diviners (1974 and many others). Her memoirs, Dance on the Earth, were published posthumously.

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