Sharon Brown

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Sharon Elizabeth Brown (* 8. November 1946 in Vancouver , Canada ) is a Canadian writer , the first with her book, Some Become Flowers: Living With Dying at Home , 1994 to the BC Book Prizes belonging Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize win could.

Life

Sharon Elizabeth Brown was born in Vancouver in 1946 as the daughter of the English "war bride" Betty Birtwistle Brown, nee Oddie, and the Canadian pilot of the Royal Canadian Air Force , David Hugh Plunkett Brown. Her father had served as a navigator in Egypt for most of World War II , from where he was deployed over the Mediterranean and Italy . Sharon Brown was born almost two months early, but that shouldn't affect her further development. ("I was born close to two months premature, but there would be no knowing it by looking at me now (shall we say that I have filled out some?)")

At the time of their birth, the Browns lived with their aunt Dorothy, her husband Len and their grandmother. A short time later, Sharon Brown's parents bought a small house on Commercial Drive, but they could not hold it for long because the father was in financial embarrassment due to his gambling debts and his alcoholism (“Unfortunately, not long after, my parents couldn't meet the mortgage payments (my father and money had an uneasy relationship - gambling and drink compounded this) ”), so that they first moved to West Vancouver and finally to Esquimalt. When his brother's electrical shop where he worked also went bankrupt , her father returned to the military in 1951. As a result, the family, to which a younger brother had joined, shared the lot of the typical nomadic life (“The lot of military families is the life of nomads.”) Of many members of the military who moved almost every year. As a result, they lived on various air bases in Summerset , Winnipeg , Manitoba , North Bay , Ontario , Longueuil , Québec , St. Bruno , Lytham St. Anne’s , England , Grostenquin and Metz in France and from there back to St. Bruno , Quebec. By the time she graduated from high school, Sharon Brown had gone through twelve different schools.

Two months after graduating from Lemoyne D'Iberville High School, she moved to Vancouver, where she worked as an office clerk in a bank for two years to save money for the university and take evening classes to acquire additional classifications in English and Classical Greek.

After graduation ("My university years were probably like most people's - lots of work, lots of drink, lots of fun and once more with feeling, lots of work.") She got a job at New Westminster YMCA-YWCA , where she was appointed director of a youth program. From there she moved to Vancouver, where she had what she believed to be the best job of her life as Director of Camping and Environmental Education programs at YWCA on Saltspring Island .

In the mid-1970s, she lived with her future partner, the German-born Canadian writer Andreas Schroeder, for a year in Toronto , after both had previously maintained their different residences, he was on a mission and she was in Kitsilano . After completing another assignment for the YWCA in Toronto, the two of them moved together in Mission to build and move into an alternative residential tower there. A few years later their first daughter was born, three years later the second daughter, who however suffered from Cornelia DeLange Syndrome (CDLS). Contrary to all unfavorable prognoses, however, this can lead a largely independent life today.

While raising her daughters, she worked in the Mission City Office, the Fraser Valley Development Office, the Bureau, and the Water Conservation Agency in parallel. Unsatisfied with their surroundings, Schroeder and Sharon Brown moved into an oceanfront house on the Sunshine Coast in Roberts Creek , which they were able to buy surprisingly cheaply.

Even if she had already written in the early years of her motherhood, she could continue her work here more freely. In the book Some Become Flowers: Living With Dying at Home (1993), which is related to the BC , she processed the experience of lengthy home care of her cancer-stricken mother (1916–1985) on a mission to enable her to die in dignity Book Prizes belonging to the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and other literary prizes . This encouraged her to continue her writing. She then wrote the novel God is a Gun , set in 1960s Canada, an untitled children's book, and is currently working on a non-fictional work called The Silver Bowl: Family and Empire. The latter examines the interrelated family history of Irish farmer sons who were involved in the formation of a modern banking system in the Far East in the late 19th century. In particular, the role of Thomas Jackson as the leader of HSBC .

Sharon Brown has also written articles for the Vancouver Sun , The Reader, and The Mission City Record.

plant

Non-fiction
  • Some Become Flowers: Living With Dying at Home. Harbor Books, Madeira Park, BC 1993, ISBN 1-55017-087-2 .
  • The Silver Bowl: Family and Empire. Harbor Books, Madeira Park, BC 2012.
novel
  • God is a gun. 1997.

Awards and nominations

reception

  • Brian Brett : “There are some writers who don't need melodrama and histrionics to capture an audience and Sharon Brown is one. During our festival evening of many writers, she shone like a pearl against skin, lustrous and unassuming but perfect. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Prize winners and nominees of the 1994 Literature Year . On: www.bcbookprizes.ca/winners/. Accessed July 13, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Sharon Brown's autobiographical sketch. On: www.thesilverbowl.com/biographies/. Accessed July 13, 2012.
  3. ↑ Article Sharon Brown. On: www.abcbookworld.com. Accessed July 13, 2012.
  4. ^ Sharon Brown membership page . On: www.writersunion.ca. Accessed July 14, 2012.
  5. ↑ Quoted from: Blog of the author Sharon Brown . Retrieved July 14, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Sharon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brown, Sharon Elizabeth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver , Canada