Coady, Lynn (1970-…), a Canadian author , won the 2013 Giller Prize for her short story collection Hellgoing (2013). The nine-story collection realistically explores a variety of human relationships in the modern world. The Giller Prize is a major annual literary award in Canada.
Coady had previously been a finalist for the Giller Prize with her fourth novel , The Antagonist (2011). The book centers on Gordon Rankin, Jr., a man approaching middle age who reacts angrily to a novel written by a trusted college friend that borrows freely from Rankin’s life.
Coady was born on Jan. 24, 1970, in Sydney and raised in Port Hawkesbury, both on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia . Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s Maritime Provinces, along with New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Coady received a B.A. degree in English and philosophy from Carleton University in 1993 and an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of British Columbia in 1997.
Coady sets much of her fiction in small towns in the Maritimes, beginning with her first, partly autobiographical, novel Strange Heaven (1998). The short story collection Play the Monster Blind (2000) also reflects events in the author’s early life. Coady’s novels Saints of Big Harbour (2002) and Mean Boy (2006) both deal with young men breaking away from the family and cultural limitations of their small Maritime towns. In the thriller Watching You Without Me (2020), a woman returns to her childhood home in Nova Scotia to settle affairs after her mother’s death.
In addition to her novels and short stories, Coady has written plays and television scripts and has edited anthologies of Canadian writing. From 2009 to 2011, she wrote the advice column “Group Therapy” for the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper. In 2010, Coady co-founded Eighteen Bridges, a magazine of Canadian journalism and essays.
