Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien
Born	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Canadian
Partner	Rawi Hage

Madeleine Thien (traditional Chinese: 鄧敏靈; simplified Chinese: 邓敏灵; born 1974) is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. She is primarily known for her novels and short stories that deal with the diasporic histories of Asian communities. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize.

Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1974 to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother. She studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University and a Masters in Fine Arts specializing in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Thien made the decision to switch from Dance to creative writing for a few reasons, but mainly due to the fact that she felt inadequate in talent, despite her passion for the art. Prior to working as an editor to the Rice Paper Magazine, she worked at McDonalds, and a Chinese Restaurant in North Vancouver. Thien was a finalist for Writers' Trust of Canada's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 1999, and in 2001 she was awarded the Emerging Writers Award (EWA) from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW) for her collection of short stories, Simple Recipes.

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