Mary Lawson

Mary Lawson (born 1946) is a Canadian novelist best known for her award-winning novel Crow Lake, and her Booker Prize longlisted novels The Other Side of the Bridge and A Town Called Solace.

Biography Born in southwestern Ontario, she spent her childhood in Blackwell, Ontario, and is a distant relative of L. M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. Her father worked as a research chemist. With a psychology degree in hand from McGill University, Lawson took a trip to Britain and ended up accepting a job as an industrial psychologist. She married a British psychologist, Richard Mobbs. Lawson spent her summers in the north, and the landscape inspired her to use Northern Ontario as her settings for both her novels. Lawson later admitted that Muskoka, where she spent her summers, "isn't and never was the North", but the area now called Cottage Country "felt like it" to people from the south. She has two grown-up sons and lives in Kingston upon Thames.

In a book review, T. F. Rigelhof of The Globe and Mail stated: "Within days you'll see people reading Crow Lake in odd places as they take quick breaks from the business of their lives. You'll also hear people say 'I stayed up all night reading this book by Mary Lawson. Mary Lawson, Mary Lawson. Remember the name."

Robert Fulford of the National Post wrote an article about Lawson describing her process towards becoming a novelist. After settling down, she wrote short fiction for women's magazines and then graduated to her first novel.

On the National Posts Paperback Fiction Best-Sellers list in 2007, Lawson's second novel, The Other Side of the Bridge, took the number-one spot.

Awards and recognition Year Work Award Category Result Ref 2002 Crow Lake Books in Canada First Novel Award — 2003 Alex Award — McKitterick Prize — 2005 Evergreen Award — 2006 The Other Side of the Bridge Man Booker Prize — 2006 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize — 2021 A Town Called Solace Booker Prize — Evergreen Award—