Annabel

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize - this is a moving novel about a young hermaphrodite growing up in the 1960s.

An uplifting exploration of love, parenthood, and all that we become

Remarkable... at once deeply moving and a powerful rallying cry

[A] powerful and important debut...about friendship, parental love and its limitations

This haunting, powerful story is about much more than the problems of being a hermaphrodite...This is a remarkable first novel, an accomplished debut by an exciting new voice with a confident, mature style

Kathleen Winter has the steadfast clarity and quietly assured talent to make this difficult subject her own...Winter has a strikingly mellifluous voice, and she has created a potent story exploring gender categorization and humanity

As an examination of a relationship between a child and his parents, this is a moving tale, told with precision and care. As a debut, it is almost faultless

Winter clearly loves all her characters, even the hopelessly misguided men, and she lavishes compassion and metaphor on them.

It's loneliness, not gender, that lies at the heart of Winter's novel - a confident, serious debut

This is an astute examination of ordinary people confronting extraordinary dilemmas

It is the powerful sense of place that is the most successful element

Beautifully paced, sometimes shocking and never prurient

A powerful story...compelling and sensitively written

A heartbreaking tale ...Winter's novel elegantly allows for the awkward ambiguities of the situation

Annabel is a beautiful book, brimming with heart and uncommon wisdom. Life is ambiguity and flux and mystery, and Kathleen Winter has written a gorgeous, searing love-letter to the possibilities that lie just below the surface of the everyday.

The perfect childs' voice... I read Annabel in two days thus breaking all my rules about taking time with my reading and having 'thinking rests', and I can't tell you how much this book has filled my thoughts since... just occasionally I think I have to beg and grovel and say 'pleeeeeeeeeeeease don't miss Annabel' . It will be in my top reads of 2011 no matter how many good books follow...I am very much hoping to see this on tomorrow's Orange Prize short list

A mesmerising combination of crisp language, deep empathy for her well-wrought characters, and a world-savvy wisdom. Annabel is an unforgettable novel

The writing was very crisp and precise, with many beautiful descriptions

Kathleen Winter isn't afraid to tackle a tough subject head on. Annabel is an extraordinary novel

Winter writes beautifully, and the sensational side of the story is handled elegantly

Funny and tender, charming and moving...a genuine pleasure to read

Kathleen Winter is the author of the international bestseller, Annabel, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Boundless has already been shortlisted for the prestigious Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize - the richest non-fiction prize in Canada. A long-time resident of St John's, Newfoundland, she now lives in Montreal.

In 1968, in a remote part of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret - the baby's parents and a trusted neighbour. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne. 
 
But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self - a girl he thinks of as 'Annabel' - is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. As Wayne approaches adulthood, and its emotional and physical demands, the woman inside him begins to cry out. The changes that follow are momentous not just for him, but for the three adults that have guarded his secret. 
 
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

Kathleen Winter

A lively interactive account [of] the native culture of Greenland, the human pathos of small mementoes of failed polar expeditions and the larger, legendary Arctic landscape in meltdown.

[Winter’s] keen novelist’s eye brings immediacy and vibrancy... An unusual and original take on the travel memoir, by the end there is a real sense of an epic journey having been taken, by both the writer and the reader.

Compulsively readable... it both heightens life and plumbs its deepest mysteries, laying bare the beauty of both the world and the soul.

Ultimately, the journey that Kathleen Winter takes on a last-minute whim is transformative. Her precise and vivid prose allows the reader to share in that transformation. For the many readers who admired Annabel and want to get to know its author better, Boundless is a tremendous gift.

Winter’s haunting odyssey will appeal to the spiritually minded.

[Winter’s] book is richly illustrated with colour plates and constitutes a thoroughly perceptive travelogue.

Winter’s lyrical prose in this book is wonderful. She treads lightly amongst her subjects, wanting to encounter places and experiences, rather than have them pointed out to her. Her descriptions of the places are intense and haunting as she evokes the stark beauty of this harsh land.

Her descriptions of the land and people are vivid. Kathleen Winter brings her novelist eye to the writing of this haunting and powerful homage to the ever-evolving and magnetic North… heartfelt, unusual, and original travel memoir… a lively and thoughtful narrative non-fiction account of native culture in the frozen north. Highly recommended for armchair travelers.

Adventures in the Northwest Passage

In 2010, bestselling author Kathleen Winter took a journey across the legendary Northwest Passage. From Greenland to Baffin Island and all along this arctic passage, Winter witnesses the new mathematics of the melting North – where polar bears mate with grizzlies, creating a new hybrid species; where the earth is on the cusp of yielding so much buried treasure that five nations stand poised to claim sovereignty of the land; and where the local Inuit population struggles to navigate the tension between taking their part in the new global economy and defending their traditional way of life. In breathtaking prose charged with vivid descriptions of the land and its people, Kathleen Winter’s Boundless is a haunting and powerful story: a homage to the ever-evolving and magnetic power of the North.

Kathleen Winter

Praise for Boundless

Absorbing.

A lively interactive account [of] the native culture of Greenland, the human pathos of small mementoes of failed polar expeditions and the larger, legendary Arctic landscape in meltdown.

[Winter’s] keen novelist’s eye brings immediacy and vibrancy... An unusual and original take on the travel memoir, by the end there is a real sense of an epic journey having been taken, by both the writer and the re ...

Absorbing.

A lively interactive account [of] the native culture of Greenland, the human pathos of small mementoes of failed polar expeditions and the larger, legendary Arctic landscape in meltdown.

[Winter’s] keen novelist’s eye brings immediacy and vibrancy... An unusual and original take on the travel memoir, by the end there is a real sense of an epic journey having been taken, by both the writer and the re ...

Absorbing.

A lively interactive account [of] the native culture of Greenland, the human pathos of small mementoes of failed polar expeditions and the larger, legendary Arctic landscape in meltdown.

[Winter’s] keen novelist’s eye brings immediacy and vibrancy... An unusual and original take on the travel memoir, by the end there is a real sense of an epic journey having been taken, by both the writer and the re ...

Books by Kathleen Winter

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