Caroline Adderson

Caroline Adderson was born and raised in Alberta. After high school, she joined the youth program Katimavik and spent a year living in different communities across Canada doing an eclectic range of volunteer work. She then settled in Vancouver where she attended the University of British Columbia, earning a B.Ed. with a concentration in Creative Writing. Over the subsequent 12 years, she worked as an ESL teacher.

Bad Imaginings, her first collection of short stories, was published in 1993. Stories from it have appeared in 19 anthologies worldwide. She has gone on to write several internationally published novels, including A History of Forgetting, Sitting Practice, and The Sky Is Falling – plus another collection of short stories: Pleased to Meet You, and more than 20 books for young readers.

Caroline is also the editor and co-contributor of Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival, a book of essays and photographs, and guest editor of Best Canadian Stories 2019. Her work has received numerous award nominations including two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. In 2017, she received a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. Among her many other awards are three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement.

In addition to her work as the Vancouver mentor for the Shoe Project, she teaches in the Writing and Publishing Program at SFU and is the Program Director of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.