Joan Walker

Joan Walker, née Sutter, was a Canadian writer.[1] She won two noted Canadian literary awards in the 1950s, the Stephen Leacock Award in 1954 for Pardon My Parka[2] and the Ryerson Fiction Award in 1957 for Repent at Leisure.[3] Pardon My Parka was a humorous memoir of her own experiences adapting to Canadian culture after moving to Canada as a war bride, while Repent at Leisure was a novel about a woman trapped in a troubled marriage.

Born in London, England,[4] she worked as a fashion artist for Harrods, an editor for Amalgamated Press and Newnes-Pearson and as a feature journalism writer for Sunday Pictorial before marrying James Rankin Walker, a Canadian military officer in the Algonquin Regiment, in 1946.[3] She became a Canadian citizen in 1954.[3] The couple initially lived in Val-d'Or, Quebec,[1] although by the time of her Ryerson Award win they had moved to Swastika, Ontario;[3] in her later years, Walker and her husband lived in Oak Bay, British Columbia.[5]

She was a member of the Canadian Women's Press Club and the Canadian Authors Association.[4] She contributed a humorous essay griping about unfair author contracts to an issue of Canadian Author & Bookman, the Canadian Authors Association's trade magazine, in 1960, creating a minor crisis for the organization as several publishing companies withdrew their advertising from the magazine in protest.[6]

She published one further novel, Marriage of Harlequin (1962), a fictional account of the life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She was later a columnist and book reviewer for The Globe and Mail.[1]