Christy Ann Conlin

Photo by Marie Cameron

Christy Ann Conlin was born and raised in Nova Scotia. Her debut novel, Heave, was a national bestseller and one of the Globe and Mail's top books of 2002. Her second novel will be published by Doubleday. Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best Canadian Stories 2004. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia where she wrote and studied fiction, stage and screenplay writing. She also holds a Bachelor of Education from Acadia University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from the University of Ottawa.

Christy Ann has also worked as storytelling apprentice in Northern Ireland. She is currently collaborating on a collection of ghost and shipwreck stories for children with her brother, Dan Conlin, a historian at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications including Canadian Geographic, Geist and Chatelaine. Christy Ann is also a regular book reviewer for the Globe and Mail. She lives in Halifax and the Annapolis Valley.

Selected List of Publications

Listening for the Island. Doubleday Canada. Forthcoming.

Heave. Doubleday Canada, 2002. ISBN 0-385-65807-9.
Nominated for the 2003 Books in Canada/Amazon.com First Novel Award,the 2003 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the 2003 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize.
     Click here to read WFNS' description of this book.

"This is a wildly energetic debut, alive with characters so vivid they very nearly eclipse one of the tenderest, truest depictions of Nova Scotia life and landscape I think I've ever read."
- Lynn Coady.

"Christy Ann Conlin reveals herself to be a writer of complex compassion, intuitive sense and relentless hope for the sweet losers who need it most of all." - Times-Colonists (Victoria).

"Conlin's debut is sharp...Her sentences are fluid, long and bring with emotion much like Jack Kerouac's coming of age stories." - New Brunswick Reader.