Novelist Paul Quarrington is also a musician, most recently in the band Porkbelly Futures, an award-winning screenwriter and an acclaimed non-fiction writer. His last novel, Galveston, was nominated for the Giller; Whale Music won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Quarrington has also won the Stephen Leacock Medal for King Leary, winner of the 2008 CBC Canada Reads competition.

Novels:

The Ravine
(Random House Canada, Spring 2008)

Galveston
(Random House Canada, 2004,
St. Martin’s Press, 2005, published as Storm Chasers,
and forthcoming in Russia, Amphora,
French in Canada, Editions Nota Bene / Alto)

• Shortlisted, The Giller Prize, 2004

The Spirit Cabinet
(Random House Canada, 1999; Grove/Atlantic Monthly, 2000)

Civilization
(Random House Canada, 1994)

Logan in Overtime
(Doubleday, 1990)

Whale Music
(Doubleday: Toronto & New York; Secker & Warburg: London, 1989)

• Governor-General’s Award for Fiction, 1990

King Leary
(Doubleday: Toronto & New York, 1987)

• Winner, Canada Reads, 2008
• Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, 1987
• Finalist, Trillium Book Award, 1987

The Life of Hope
(Doubleday: Toronto & New York, 1985)

Home Game
(Doubleday: Toronto & New York, 1983)

The Service
(Coach House Press, 1979)

Non-Fiction:

From the Far Side of the River
(Greystone, 2003)

The Boy on the Back of the Turtle
(Greystone, 1998)

• Shortlisted, Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, 1998
• Shortlisted, Trillium Book Award, 1998

Fishing With My Old Guy
(Greystone, 1995; Kodansha, 1996)

Hometown Heroes:
On the Road with Canada's National Hockey Team
(Collins, 1989)

Other Awards:

• Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters,
  most promising new writer,1986
  
  
• Periodical Distributors of Canada Authors Award
  
  
• Genie Award for best screenplay, Perfectly Normal
  
  
• Genie Award for best song - Claire (from the movie Whale Music)
  
  
• Gemini Award Nomination, Best Writing In A Dramatic
  Series for Due South, ‘All the Queen's Horses’ with
  Paul Gross, and John Krizanc
  
  
• The Writers Guild of Canada's Annual Top Ten Award, 2000,
  ‘Manipulation’, an episode of the television series Power Play

The Critics:

"Got Galveston on Friday, started it on Saturday night, finished it yesterday, on a flight home from London. It's brilliant; I loved every page of it. It has a lovely lightness, the words and characters, and it manages always to be funny and real. I think it's my favourite book by you since Civilization. Congratulations."
     - Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clark, Ha, Ha, Ha

"Buy Galveston right now. Paul Quarrington’s ninth novel (and one of his best) is a terrific, brilliant, near-perfect piece."
     - Globe & Mail

"Mr. Quarrington has a ribald, animated prose style all his own...exceptionally inventive...."
     - Margot Mifflin, The New York Times Book Review

"Tender and heartbreaking... A novel to be treasured, even by those who don't believe in magic."
     - Publishers Weekly

"No one gives humanity to life's oddballs as well and as
sensitively as Paul Quarrington."
     - Roddy Doyle

"[O]vertly humorous and covertly serious....Before Houdini died,
he swore that he would return if it were possible. He probably
didn't have fiction in mind as a method for reincarnation, but channeled through writers such as Quarrington he's accomplished the greatest feat of all."
     - Melvin Jules Bukiet, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Given that, with the possible exception of Mordecai Richler, Quarrington is probably the funniest novelist writing in Canada today."
     - Ray Robertson, The Toronto Star

"...verbal ripeness, a wildly eccentric cast of characters, comic
scenes of rare nuttiness, rutting galore, and a quest, which like
all good quests ends back where it began in a rather astonishing way."
     - The Globe and Mail

"The best novel (Whale Music) written about rock 'n' roll."
     - Penthouse