Born in Vancouver in 1950, Wendy Lill grew up in Ontario and was elected as the Member of Parliament for Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1997. Her first stage play, On the Line, was produced in 1982. It was about the exploitation of immigrant women in the Winnipeg garment industry. As a playwright and screenwriter she has received two ACTRA awards and a Golden Sheaf award, plus nominations for Chalmers and Gemini awards. She has been nominated for the Governor General's Award for Drama for The Occupation of Heather Rose in 1987, All Fall Down in 1994, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum in 1996, and Corker in 1999. The Glace Bay Miner's Museum has been made into a critically successful Canadian movie. Memories of You, one of her many successful plays, concerns the controversial author of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart, who lived in Pender Harbour for ten months during her romantic obsession with the poet George Barker. In the play Smart is confronted by her daughter who resents her selfish and irresponsible infatuation with the married Barker. Lill's play Sisters concerns the 1972 burning of a Shubenacadie residential school for Native children by Sister Mary. All Fall Down is about a daycare after one of its staff is accused of sexual abuse. In 2007 Lill authored a play based on her experiences in the parliamentary debates surrounding human reproductive technologies, such as stem-cell research, entitled Chimera (Talonbooks). Lill easily qualifies as one of Canada's most courageous and interesting dramatists.

BOOKS:

The Fighting Days (Talonbooks, 1985)

The Occupation of Heather Rose (Talonbooks, 1987)

Sisters (Talonbooks, 1991)

The Glace Bay Miner's Museum (Talonbooks, 1996)

Corker (Talonbooks, 1999)

Memories of You (Talonbooks, reprint 2003)

Chimera (Talonbooks, 2007)

[BCBW 2008] "Theatre"