Of This Earth

Recognized as one of Canadas finest literary treasures. Twice he has received Canadas most prestigious prize for fiction writing: the Govenor-Generals award(equivalent to the Pulitzer prize for fiction). Now comes new recognition for Wiebes nonfiction writing. His recently released childhood memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in theBoreal Forest, has won the Charles taylor Prize for Literary nonfiction (considered to be the countrys most prestigious literary on fiction prize). The book holds rudys memoirs of growing up through age 12. His immigrant family cut a farm out of stony bushland in remote Saskatchewan. They hand-dug their well, climbed a ladder to their beds under the rafters, farmed with horses, and traveled by sleigh on the frontier. Stories and singing and food from their native ukraine and Poland held them and filled their bodies and souls. Of This Earth is written with spare and eloquent prose, say the jurors who chose the book for the Charles taylor Prize. Wiebe conveys the riches of a hardscrabble inheritance; a love of words, reading and music, a sustaining yet unsentimental faith, and a bond with the natural world, all of which have provided a compass for his writing life.

Rudy Wiebe is widely published internationally and the winner of numerous awards, including two Governor-General's Literary Awards for the novels The Temptations of Big Bear and A Discovery of Strangers. His most recent novel is Sweeter Than All the World. Rudy Wiebe is an Officer of the Order of Canada and lives in Edmonton.