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Sarah Tolmie is the author of three collections of poetry: Trio, shortlisted for the 2016 Pat Lowther Award, Check, and The Art of Dying, shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize. She has published eight books of fiction, embracing short story, novella and novel, including The Fourth IslandAll the Horses of IcelandThe Stone Boatmen, and The Little Animals. She is a medievalist trained at the University of Toronto and University of Cambridge. She is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo.

Judges’ Citation

A modern danse macabre in eighty-nine parts, Sarah Tolmie’s The Art of Dying conceals a multifaceted meditation on mortality beneath its deceptively simple lyric surface.

A modern danse macabre in eighty-nine parts, Sarah Tolmie’s The Art of Dying conceals a multifaceted meditation on mortality beneath its deceptively simple lyric surface. An irreverent feminist in the tradition of Dorothy Parker and Stevie Smith, Tolmie leverages the subversive possibilities of doggerel to upend our assumptions about everything from abortion to the Anthropocene. Wickedly funny, this is work of great intimacy, too, introducing us to a mother, concerned citizen, social media addict, bookworm, and bon vivant who wants nothing more than to remain ‘Here on the quiet earth that I still love, / Where the last humans are.


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