NORMA HARRS

Norma Harrs was born and raised in Ireland. She emigrated to Canada as a young woman, and settled in Winnipeg where she married and raised two sons. It was there she pursued her interest in theatre, performing on the professional stage. She also became a freelance broadcaster and writer working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and various newspapers across the country.

After moving to Toronto in the mid-seventies, she worked as a freelance journalist for The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star and other Canadian newspapers. She also wrote four plays, the first of which was optioned by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Subsequently her next three plays were produced professionally. Her first novel, A Certain State of Mind, came out in the eighties. Many of her short stories have been carried in literary journals and anthologies both here and in the United States. She has been a finalist seven times in the CBC Literary Contest.

Her first collection of short stories, Love Minus One & Other Stories, was published by Hounslow Press in 1994 and received glowing reviews. Her next collection, Where Dreams Have Gone, published by Simon & Pierre, were no less successful. Stories from both collections were carried on CBC's programme, 'Between the Covers.' Some of her stories are available in audio format from Audible Records (UK).

Her work is currently carried in a school text published by Harcourt, Brace. Her stories were included in a course given on the Irish short story, being offered at Trent University, Peterborough.

Norma gives readings of her work and has been a popular performer at both the Harbourfront Reading Series and the Leacock Humour Festival in Orillia.

More information can be found about Norma on her website: www.normaharrs.com

The Critics:

“Harrs lights up her lives: In one of her shrewd insights, Virginia Woolf praised Shakespeare for his ability to penetrate the minds of his dramatic characters and see the world according to the predicaments, emotions and contradictions that each lives. Woolf calls this creative ability "incandescence," for it lights up a character as if from the inside...Norma Harrs has written a series of incandescent short stories. Each story centres on one or two principal characters and a situation - death, marriage, a party, a dance class - that causes unease. Harrs has the uncommon ability to see these situations as her characters feel them and her Where Dreams Have Gone, focuses on moments of telling revelation, in which degrees of irony and degrees of understanding animate, and sometimes flummox, them. These are worthy tales, written in the tradition of Elizabeth Tallent, William Trevor or Alice Munro. ”
     - Allan Hepburn, The Financial Post

“Harrs' short stories go a long way in satisfying reader:
Love Minus One And Other Stories is a collection from the pen of Norma Harrs... She was raised in Ireland and stylistically speaking, you can tell by that special brilliant quality to her writing that she writes from a British mindset. She has the graceful English usage of Katherine Mansfield in this group of short stories, and exhibits the acerbic wit and sharp, elegant writing skills of Nancy Mitford.... All of these stories seem to be saying, "Things are not as they seem."...Sexual betrayal is the theme that permeates the core of this collection of stories. Love, or a misconstrued version of it, becomes the centrepoint in each story... It is always great to celebrate good writing from inside of Canada.”
     - Judy Pollard Smith, The Financial Post

“Amid the cacophony of experimental fiction emanating from Canadian small presses these day, Norma Harrs' Love Minus One & Other Stories strikes a distinctive note. Writing in the realist tradition of Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, Harrs' second book is a wry, witty and sometimes surprising collection of stories that is eminently readable ...as with Munro, Harrs' real strength lies in her construction of taut and insightful tales about women's relationships and their sexuality.”
     - Mark Cohen, Books in Review