Carol Wootton was born in Victoria on March 17, 1934. One of Carol Wootton's earliest piano instructors advised her, "You'd be better off cooking supper and spanking the baby." Soon thereafter she won the silver medallion as Victoria's top pianist in 1954.

Wootton studied music for two years in London but her hopes for a glamorous professional career were dashed in her twenties--when she first faced the trauma of having a severed limb "and the reality of learning that I would be minus my right leg below the knee (BK) for the rest of my life."

Having made music and literature her lifelong passions, Wootton has explored the joys and pain of music in The Page Turner and Other Stories (Orca 1989), and published a collection of literary essays, Selective Affinities: Comparative Essays from Goethe to Arden with a Swiss publisher.

More recently Wootton has published a collection of memoirs and critiques pertaining to her musical evolution, Preening Clefs (Towner 2007), a fourth title, Singing-Masters of my Soul, and a collection of vignettes, essays and biographical appreciations, Out of Hungary (Towner 2009), all pertaining to Hungary. At the end of the summer of 1956, Wootton was enrolled at the Vienna Akademie. The Hungarian Revolution broke out on October 23, 1956. She attended an unforgettable concert by Gyorgy Cziffra in Vienna on November 17, 1956. "Strangely, I rarely listen to Cziffra's recordings now," Wootton writes. "I prefer to remember the tall, thin figure in the Brahmsaal of the Musikverein who filled me with more fervour for the Hungarian cause than all the speeches, the press, and even the refugees themselves."

Wootton's sixth book, Chopin Revisited: 1810-2010 (Towner, 2010), is an homage to the musician in the bicentennial year of his birth.

Having taught English at UVic and comparative literature in the Universities of Texas and Georgia, she lives with her sister in Oak Bay where her recent titles are available for sale from Ivy's Books.

BOOKS:

Selective Affinities: Comparative Essays from Goethe to Arden (Peter Lang 1983)
The Page Turner and Other Stories (Orca 1989)
Singing-Masters of my Soul (Trafford 1999)
Preening Clefs (Towner 2007) 0-978324-00-1 $17.95
Out of Hungary (Towner 2009). unpriced 978-9783240-1-8
Chopin Revisited: 1810-2010 (Towner, 2010) 978-0-9783240-2-5 $21.95

[BCBW 2011] "Music"