Photo Credit: Jim Williams
Website:
http://www.janefinlayyoung.ca/
Email:
c/o Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
Jane Finlay-Young was born in England's Lake District and emigrated to Canada when she was six. Since that time she has lived in the bush in Manitoba, by the ocean on Cape Breton Island, and in various places in Ontario, including Toronto. She moved to Halifax in the Fall of 2006 and hopes to stay a good long time. Born into a family of atheists, scientists and artists she converted to Orthodox Judaism for a while and spent a fascinating, tumultuous year in Israel in the late seventies. She has since returned to her atheist roots. She has been writing since the age of nine (secretly in closets) but didn't take herself seriously until the mid-nineties when she began her daily (except when life gets in the way!) commitment to writing.
Jane has taught writing (developing a writing workshop, The Mini Writing Career, with her friend and colleague, Annie Jacobsen, now deceased) and has edited the work of others.
In 2000 she published her first novel, From Bruised Fell (Penguin), and before that various short stories. From Bruised Fell has been optioned by the film production company Sienna (New Waterford Girl, Touch of Pink, Marion Bridge). Jane's non-fiction piece, Ten Million Atoms Fit on the Head of a Pin, was published in the anthology First Man in My Life: Daughters Write About Their Fathers. (Penguin, Canada 2007).
Jane has co-authored a novel, Watermelon Syrup, with Annie Jacobsen. A novelist and a poet, Annie died in May 2005. She finished the third draft of her novel two weeks before she died and asked Jane to act on her behalf should it be accepted for publication. Watermelon Syrup was published in August of 2007.
- August 2007 - publication of the novel Watermelon Syrup (Wilfrid Laurier University Press). Jane co-authored this book with the deceased author, Annie Jacobsen. ISBN: 978-1-55458-005-7
- June 2007 - publication of First Man In My Life: Daughters Write About Their Fathers. Jane's non-fiction entry in the anthology is called: Ten Million Atoms Fit On The Head Of A Pin. ISBN: 9780143051176
- February 2000 - From Bruised Fell (a novel) published by Penguin, Canada. ISBN 0140286497 (trade paperback)
- July 2003 - mass market paperback version of From Bruised Fell published. ISBN 9780143015468
- "Canadian writer Jane Finlay-Young's first novel, From Bruised Fell, like much of the best of modern literature, reads as if it were written in a poetic trance [...] If Finlay-Young [...] can find characters and stories as compelling as those she describes with such grace in this book, she will become a writer to watch." - The Globe and Mail
- From Bruised Fell was Editor's Choice in The Globe and Mail March 11/00.
- "It leaves the reader with the satisfying feeling that any good novel imparts - the feeling of an important human experience faithfully rendered." - The Toronto Star
- "To convincingly convey all this is quite the task with an adult narrating the story, but to do so through the eyes of a child is a haywire act, which Toronto writer Jane Finlay-Young masterfully pulls off in her mesmerizing first novel From Bruised Fell. Missy's narration is note perfect, emotionally and psychologically credible in voice, level of understanding and perspective." - Hamilton Spectator
- Fall 1995 - Oil Spill (short story) accepted for publication in The Quarterly (Editor: Gordon Lish; New York)
- Spring 1995 - Chin Ups (short story) published in Blood and Aphorisms literary magazine. This story won first prize in the Blood and Aphorisms Short Story Contest that year.
