Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Thien) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1974
• Where—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Simon Fraser University; University of British Columbia
• Awards—Giller Prize; Governor General's Literary Award
• Currently—lives in Montreal, Quebec


Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother, she studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University and literature at the University of British Columbia.

Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (2002), is a collection of short stories, of which Alice Monroe said, "I am astonished by the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity."

Thien's first novel, Certainty (2007), has been translated into 16 languages. Her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter (2012), about the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide, has been translated into 9 languages.

In 2008, Thien was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, as well as its 2010 State Department-funded study tour of the U.S. The tour involved eight international writers who were asked to explore the unresolved legacies of American history. Thien's essay, "The Grand Tour: In the Shadow of James Baldwin," concludes the 2015 program's essay collection, Fall and Rise, American Style: Eight International Writers Between Gettysburg and the Gulf. The study tour was also the subject of filmmaker Sahar Sarshar's documentary, Writing in Motion: A Nation Divided.

From 2010 to 2015, Thien was part of City University of Hong Kong's International Faculty in the MFA Program for Creative Writing. After Hong Kong's crackdown on freedom of speech, she wrote a controversial essay about the writing program's abrupt closure for the UK's Guardian newspaper.

In 2013, Thien became the Simon Fraser University Writer-in-Residence.

Thien's 2016 novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In advance of its U.S. publication, it was longlisted (fiction list) for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence.

Thien is the common-law partner of novelist Rawi Hage.

Awards and recognition
2001 - Canadian Authors Association Award (most promising Canadian writer under 30)
2002 - City of Vancouver Book Award, VanCity Book Prize, Ethel Wilson Prize
2010 - Ovid Prize
2015 - Frankfort Book Fair's de:LiBeraturpreis
2016 - Governor General's Award, Scotiabank Giller Prize
(Author bio adaptd from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/07/2016.)