Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, in 1943; he is of Dutch and Sinhalese ancestry,[5][6] making him a Burgher. His parents separated when he was an infant; he then lived with relatives until 1954 when he joined his mother in England.[5] Before moving to England, he attended S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia in Colombo. While in England, Ondaatje pursued secondary education at Dulwich College; he then emigrated to Montreal, Quebec, in 1962.[7] After relocating to Canada, Ondaatje studied at Bishop's College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, for three years.[5][7] In his final year[5] he attended the University of Toronto where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965.[5] In 1967, he received a Master of Arts from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.[2]

While he was working on his undergraduate degree at Bishop's University, Ondaatje's met his future mentor, the poet D.G Jones, who praised his poetic ability.[5]

After his formal schooling, Ondaatje began teaching English at the University of Western Ontario in London.[7] In 1971, reluctant to get his PhD, he left his position at Western Ontario and went on to teach English literature at Glendon College, York University.[2][7]

Ondaatje's work includes fiction, autobiography, poetry and film. He has published 13 books of poetry, and won the Governor General's Award for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 (1979). Anil's Ghost (2000) was the winner of the 2000 Giller Prize, the Prix Médicis, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the 2001 Irish Times International Fiction Prize and Canada's Governor General's Award. The English Patient (1992) won the Booker Prize, the Canada Australia Prize, and the Governor General's Award. It was adapted as a motion picture, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and multiple other awards.[8] In the Skin of a Lion (1987), a novel about early immigrants in Toronto, was the winner of the 1988 City of Toronto Book Award, finalist for the 1987 Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for best novel of the year in English, and winner of the first Canada Reads competition in 2002.

Coming Through Slaughter (1976), is a novel set in New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1900, loosely based on the lives of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and photographer E. J. Bellocq. It was the winner of the 1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award. Running in the Family (1982) is a semi-fictional memoir of his childhood in Ceylon.

Ondaatje's novel Divisadero won the 2007 Governor General's Award. In 2011 Ondaatje worked with Daniel Brooks to create a play based on this novel.[9]

In July 2018 his novel Warlight was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.[10]

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter and Divisadero have been adapted for the stage and produced in theatrical productions across North America and Europe. In addition to The English Patient adaptation, Ondaatje's films include a documentary on fellow poet B.P. Nichol, Sons of Captain Poetry, and The Clinton Special: A Film About The Farm Show, which chronicles a collaborative theatre experience led in 1971 by Paul Thompson of Theatre Passe Muraille. In 2002, Ondaatje published a non-fiction book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, which won special recognition at the 2003 American Cinema Editors Awards, as well as a Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for best book of the year on the moving image.[11]

On 11 July 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada which was later upgraded to grade of companion in 2016, the highest level of the order.[12][13] In 2005, he was honoured with Sri Lanka Ratna by the former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Sri Lanka Ratna is the highest honour given by the Government of Sri Lanka for foreign nationals.

In 2008, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[14][15]

In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, discovered in Sri Lanka, was named after him.[16]

In April 2015, Ondaatje was one of several members of PEN American Center who withdrew as literary host when the organization gave its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. The award came in the wake of the shooting attack on the magazine's Paris offices in January 2015.[17] Ondaatje and several other hosts condemned the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo, but claimed that due to the magazine's history of anti-Islam content it should not have been honoured.

Since the 1960s, Ondaatje has been involved with Toronto's Coach House Books, supporting the independent small press by working as a poetry editor. Ondaatje and his wife Linda Spalding, a novelist and academic, co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, with Michael Redhill, Michael Helm, and Esta Spalding.[11] In 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) and two years later a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ondaatje served as a founding member of the board of trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry from 2000 to 2018.[18]

Ondaatje has two children with his first wife, Canadian artist Kim Ondaatje. His brother Sir Christopher Ondaatje is a philanthropist, businessman and author. Ondaatje's nephew David Ondaatje is a film director and screenwriter, who made the 2009 film The Lodger.[19]

• Ondaatje Letters
• Sri Lankan Chetties
• Christopher Ondaatje
• Kim Ondaatje
• Pearl Ondaatje

• Comparative Cultural Studies and Michael Ondaatje's Writing. Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005. ISBN 1-55753-378-4
• Barbour, Douglas. Michael Ondaatje. New York: Twayne, 1993. ISBN 0-8057-8290-7
• Jewinski, Ed. Michael Ondaatje: Express Yourself Beautifully. Toronto: ECW, 1994. ISBN 1-55022-189-2
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven (斯蒂文·托托西演). 文学研究的合法化: 一种新实用主义 ·整体化和经主 义文学与文化研究方法 (Legitimizing the Study of Literature: A New Pragmatism and the Systemic Approach to Literature and Culture). Trans. Ma Jui-ch'i (马瑞琪翻). Beijing: Peking University Press, 1997. 111-34. ISBN 7-301-03482-2
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Cultures, Peripheralities, and Comparative Literature." Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. By Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. 150-65. ISBN 90-420-0534-3

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Ondaatje.

• On Michael Ondaatje's late style, in the Literary Review of Canada, by Moez Surani.
• Jane Henderson (2 May 2016). "Ondaatje wins St. Louis Literary Award". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
• Works by or about Michael Ondaatje in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Michael Ondaatje at IMDb
• "I came from a tussle with the sea": An interview with Michael Ondaatje, in Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts (24.2)
• Full text of The Dainty Monsters
• "Adventures in the Skin Trade" PEN World Voices at LIVE from the New York Public Library. 4 May 2008 (Video, 1hr, 6 min)
• Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval on The Book Show, ABC Radio National on Divisadero recorded in Montreal, April 2007.
• Profile. Emory University
• Order of Canada Citation
• Interview With Ondaatje, Salon, November 1996

• List of Bishop's College School alumni