Rudy Wiebe

Rudy Henry Wiebe (born 4 October 1934) is a Canadian author and professor emeritus in the department of English at the University of Alberta since 1992.

Life

Wiebe was born at Speedwell, near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in what would later become his family’s chicken barn. For thirteen years he lived in an isolated community of about 250 people, as part of the last generation of homesteaders to settle the Canadian west. He did not speak English until age six since Mennonites customarily speak Plautdietsch (Low German) at home and standard German at Church. He attended the small school three miles from his farm and the Speedwell Mennonite Brethren Church.

He received his B.A. in 1956 from the University of Alberta and then studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tübingen in West Germany, near Stuttgart. In 1958 he married Tena Isaak; they now have three children. In Germany, he studied literature and theology and traveled to England, Austria, Switzerland and Italy.

Wiebe taught at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana from 1963 to 1967, and he has travelled widely. He is deeply committed to the literary culture of Canada and has shown a particular interest in the traditions and struggles of people in the prairie provinces, both whites and Aboriginals.

Wiebe won the Governor General's Award for Fiction twice, for "The Temptations of Big Bear" (1973) and "A Discovery of Strangers" (1994). He was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1986. In 2000 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2003 Wiebe was a member of the jury for the Giller Prize.

Books by Rudy H. Wiebe

* "Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest"
* "River of Stone: Fictions and Memories"
* "Sweeter Than All the World"
* "Fruits of the Earth"
* "Peace Shall Destroy Many"
* "My Lovely Enemy"
* "A Discovery of Strangers"
* "The Blue Mountains of China"
* "Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman" (with Yvonne Johnson)
* "Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic"
* "War in the West: Voices of the North-West Rebellion" (with Bob Beal)
* "The Temptations of Big Bear"

Awards

* 1973 Governor General's Award for Fiction for "The Temptations of Big Bear"
* 1994 Governor General's Award for Fiction for "A Discovery of Strangers"
* 2007 Charles Taylor Prize for "Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest"

External links

* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008582 Rudy Wiebe's] entry in [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=HomePage&Params=A1 The Canadian Encyclopedia]
* [http://www.randomhouse.ca/author/results.pperl?authorid=33129&view=full_sptlght Random House, Author Spotlight]
* [http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2007/winner_2007.asp Charles Taylor Prize]
* [http://www.goshen.edu/facultypubs/Ervin_Beck/GOSPELH.html A Reader's Guide to Mennonite Literature]
* [http://www.plautdietsch-freunde.de/home.php4?action=22&gruppe=20&artikelnr=14060PD Plautdietsch FRIND]