Camilla Gibb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Camilla Gibb is a Canadian writer, born in London, England, and brought up in Toronto, Ontario. Gibb attended North Toronto Collegiate Institute and graduated from Jarvis Collegiate Institute. She holds a BA in anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto and received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Oxford University in 1997.

Gibb gained recognition as a writer with the publication of her first novel Mouthing the Words in 1999. It may be called a bildungsroman, for it traces Thelma Ann Barley's growth to adulthood through sexual abuse, anorexia and multiple personality disorder. Reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) and Andrea Ashworth's Once in a House on Fire (1998), the novel has been described as a "heartwrenching rollercoaster ride" (The Guardian), and "a smashing combination of the heartbreaking and the hilarious" (Vogue).

In 1999, both The Globe and Mail and NOW selected Mouthing the Words as one of the "Best Books of the Year". In 2000, the novel won Gibb the prestigious City of Toronto Book Award. In 2001, she was added to the Orange Futures List, compiled by the jury of the Orange Prize, as one of the 21 promising young writers to watch in the new century.

Gibb's second novel, The Petty Details of So-and-So's Life was published in August 2002. A national bestseller in Canada, it was chosen by the Globe and Mail as one of the "Best Books of the Year".

Gibb's latest novel Sweetness in the Belly (2005) is a love story set against the backdrop of the Ethiopian Revolution. It was Ethiopia in which Gibb did the fieldwork for her Ph.D. The book was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, was the winner of Ontario's Trillium Book Award, was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and amazon.ca, and is longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award.

To date, Gibb's novels have been published in 19 countries and translated into 15 languages. She has also written a number of short stories, articles and reviews. She was the 1999 winner of the Hart House Literary Contest and the 2001 winner of the CBC Literary Awards for short story. She held the position of the Jack McClelland Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto in 2006, a post previously held by Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence and W.O. Mitchell, among others, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta.