EDMONTON – Edmonton-based author and editor Gloria Sawai, who won the 2002 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, has died.
Regina-based Coteau Books, which published her award-winning short story collection “A Song for Nettie Johnson,” announced on its website that Sawai died on Wednesday.
It did not specify a cause of death and a Coteau publisher was unavailable for comment Thursday.
“Rest in Peace, Gloria Sawai. You will be long remembered,” said a statement on the Coteau Books website.
Born in Minneapolis, Minn., Sawai moved with her family to Saskatchewan when she was one and lived there until she was 15, when they relocated to Alberta.
Her most famous short story, “The Day I Sat With Jesus On The Sun Deck And A Wind Came Up And Blew My Kimono Open And He Saw My Breasts,” has appeared in several anthologies and literary journals.
It also appeared in “A Song for Nettie Johnson,” her first book-length publication, which examined the lives of people on the margins.
“Gloria Sawai brilliantly creates a world in which love and light redeem human failings,” said GG jury members Sandra Birdsell, Douglas Glover and Evelyn Lau when she won the award.
“With clarity, deftness and generosity, she celebrates a universe in which even the least of her characters can achieve a vision of the infinite.”
Sawai also wrote drama scripts that were produced by, among others, Alberta Theatre Projects and Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary and at the Edmonton Fringe Festival.
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