Photo Credit: Bruce MacLennan
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c/o Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
Eleonore Schönmaier's writing has won numerous awards including the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and her story "Sidereal Time" was a Sheldon Currie Fiction Award winner. She's the author of the short story collection Passion Fruit Tea (Roseway Publishing) and the poetry collection Treading Fast Rivers (McGill-Queen's University Press) which was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. Recently she performed her poetry at the Music Room in Halifax, and as part of the Footnote Series in Rotterdam. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in many magazines internationally including Canadian Literature, Descant, Event, Grain, Prism international, The Antigonish Review, Arc, The New Quarterly, Vallum, Border Crossing Berlin, De Tweede Ronde (Amsterdam), Dreamcatcher (UK), Stand (UK) and has been translated into Dutch. Her poem "Weightless" has been selected for The Best Canadian Poetry 2010. She has undergraduate degrees from Queen's University, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and has taught advanced fiction writing at St. Mary's University and creative writing at Mount St. Vincent University. Born and raised in the Red Lake district of Northwestern Ontario, she has lived on the shores of Lake Ontario, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and the North Sea. Her home is on Nova Scotia's South Shore.
- Treading Fast Rivers. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-88629-361-8.
- "The natural world is prominent, almost dreamlike in Treading Fast Rivers, and starkly beautiful. Treading Fast Rivers is strong poetry." - Shane Neilson, Prairie Fire, Autumn 2000.
- "Schönmaier's poetic world is a deftly-realized visual landscape: allowing her to examine-with clear-eyed perceptiveness- the territory of the heart. [Schönmaier] is alert to the sensual possibilities of the world. These poems delight in the richness of experience." - Anne Simpson, Atlantic Books Today, Spring 2000.
- "Her poems open windows not so much onto but in their subjects: they describe a kind of reverence." - Susan Gillis, League of Canadian Poets, Autumn 2000.
- "She has begun to make beauty: wonderfully unforgettable." - M. Travis Lane, Fiddlehead, Winter 2000.
- "This author's writing is delightful: from concrete poetry to couplets." - Andrea Sharman, Canadian Literature, Autumn 2000.
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- Passion Fruit Tea. Roseway Publishing, 1994. ISBN: 0-9698407-0-5.
- Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010. Tightrope Books, 2010. ISBN-10: 1926639162.
- To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax. HRM, 2004. ISBN: 0-9687262-3-2.
- Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada, Roseway Publishing Company, 1999, ISBN: 1-896496-09-1.
- Vintage 1999, Ronsdale Press, 1999, ISBN: 0-921870-70-1.
- Vintage 97-98, Quarry Press, 1998, ISBN: 1-55082-224-1.
Earle Birney Prize for Poetry, 2008.
Winston Collins Descant Prize for Best Canadian poem, finalist, 2007.
First Prize, Literary Competition, Poetry, 2007. Writers' Federation of New Brunswick.
Sheldon Currie Fiction Award, second prize, 2005.
Fundacion Valpariso Fellowship, Spain, 2005.
Banff Writing Studio Scholarship, 2002.
Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Best First Book of Poetry, Finalist.
2000 Hawthornden Fellowship, Scotland, 2000.
