Helen Weinzweig

Helen Weinzweig (1915–2010), née Tenenbaum, was a Canadian writer.[1] The author of two novels and a short story collection, her novel Basic Black with Pearls won the Toronto Book Award in 1981, and her short story collection A View from the Roof was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1989.[1]

Born in Poland in 1915, she emigrated to Canada at age nine with her mother,[1] and married composer John Weinzweig on July 12, 1940.[2] She published her first short story, "Surprise!", in Canadian Forum in 1967,[1] and her debut novel Passing Ceremony was published in 1973.[1] She came to be regarded as one of Canada's first important feminist writers.[1] Her style was marked by experimental forms with some aspects of metafiction; in her short story "Journey to Porquis", a writer on a train trip realizes that all of his fellow passengers are characters in his novel.[1]

Weinzweig also wrote and produced a one-act play, My Mother's Luck,[3] and several of her short stories in A View from the Roof were adapted for stage and CBC Radio broadcast by playwright Dave Carley.[3]

Weinzweig died in 2010, aged 94.[1]