Elisabeth Harvor

1936-

Elisabeth Harvor (short story writer, poet, and novelist) was born Erica Elisabeth Arendt Deichmann on 26 June 1936 in Saint John, New Brunswick. Shortly after her fifth birthday, Harvor’s parents sent her to school at a one-room country schoolhouse in Summerville, in the Kennebecasis Valley of southern New Brunswick. She remained at this school until grade eight, after which she moved to attend the Saint John Vocational High School and then later attended MacDonald Consolidated School in the village of Kingston. When she was eighteen, Harvor entered nursing school at the Saint John General Hospital but then decided to work in her parents’ pottery studio. A year later, in 1957, she married an architect Stig Harvor and lived in Europe with him for nearly two years before returning to Canada. She attended Concordia University where she obtained her MA in Creative Writing in 1986. She moved to Toronto to become a course director and sessional lecturer at York University. She has since been the recipient of numerous grants for poetry and fiction from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the City of Ottawa Arts Board. She has also lectured at Concordia, as well as being writer-in-residence there, mentored and instructed at the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, and instructed at University of New Brunswick and the Maritime Writers’ Workshop. Harvor's poetry and fiction has also appeared in numerous periodicals and magazines such as The New Yorker, The Hudson Review, and The Malahat Review. Her published works include three collections of short stories, Women and Children (1973), later revised as Our Lady of All the Distances (1991), If Only We Could Drive Like This Forever (1988), and Let Me Be the One (1996); two books of poetry, Fortress of Chairs (1992) and The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring (1997); an anthology, A Room at the Heart of Things (1998); as well as novels, including Excessive Joy Injures the Heart (2000), All Times Have Been Modern (2004), and An Open Door in the Landscape (2010). Her first book of poetry, Fortress of Chairs, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her body of work has received numerous other prizes and awards, among them the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid-career and the Alden Nowlan Award for Literary Excellence.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Saint John, Fredericton