Carol Shields - Biography

Biography

Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She studied at Hanover College Indiana, where she became member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. A United Nations scholarship encouraged Shields to spend a junior year abroad 1955–1956 at the University of Exeter in England. Later, Shields did post-graduate work at the University of Ottawa, where she received an MA in 1975.

In 1955, while on British Council sponsored study week in Scotland, she met a Canadian engineering student, Donald Hugh Shields. The couple married in 1957 and moved to Canada, where they had a son and four daughters. Shields later became a Canadian citizen.

In 1973, Shields became editorial assistant for the journal Canadian Slavonic Papers while living in Ottawa 1968–1978. In 1977, Shields was a sessional lecturer in the English Department at the University of Ottawa for a year. She later taught Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia while living in Vancouver 1978–80. In 1980, she and Don settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after Don was hired to teach in the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Engineering. Winnipeg was where she wrote her major books. From the fall of 1982 onward, Carol Shields taught in the English Department at the University of Manitoba, first as an Assistant Professor (1982–1992), then as an Associate Professor (1992–1995). Shields was made Full Professor of English in 1995, and, on retirement in 2000, she became Professor Emerita at the University of Manitoba.. In 1996, she became chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. In 2000, after Don's retirement, the couple moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where she died in 2003 of breast cancer at age 68.

Shields' eldest daughter Anne Giardini is also a writer. Giardini has contributed to the National Post as a columnist, and has published her first novel, The Sad Truth About Happiness. Anne's second novel, Advice for Italian Boys, was published in 2009. Her youngest daughter Sara Cassidy has published young adult novels including SLICK 2010 and WINDFALL 2011.