André Alexis facts for kids

André Alexis is a Canadian writer. He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and grew up in Ottawa, Canada. Today, he lives in Toronto, Ontario. André Alexis has won many important awards for his writing. These include the Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

He is most famous for his series of five novels called the Quincunx Cycle. These books are set in and around Southern Ontario. His second book in this series, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Giller Prize. This award made him and his books much more well-known.

André Alexis: His Writing Journey

André Alexis started his career working in theatre. He was even a playwright-in-residence at the Canadian Stage Company. This means he was a writer who worked directly with a theatre company. His short play, Lambton, Kent, and Other Vistas, was first performed in 1995.

His first collection of short stories was Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa (1994). This book was chosen as a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize.

Early Novels and Children's Books

Alexis' first novel, Childhood, came out in 1998. It won the Books in Canada First Novel Award. He also shared the Trillium Award for this book with another famous writer, Alice Munro. Childhood was also a finalist for the 1998 Giller Prize.

In 2005, Alexis wrote his first book for young people, Ingrid and the Wolf. This book was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature. This is a very important award for children's books in Canada.

His novel Asylum was published in 2008. It takes place in Ottawa during the time when Brian Mulroney was the Prime Minister of Canada.

Creative Projects and Collaborations

In 2011, Alexis wrote a new play for Toronto's Tarragon Theatre. The play was called Name in Vain. It was the first in a planned series of ten plays. Each play would explore one of the Ten Commandments in a different way. Name in Vain was almost completely silent. It was set in a monastery where monks had taken a vow of silence. One monk breaks his vow and the commandment, causing big changes in the monastery.

Alexis has also worked with Canadian composer James Rolfe. Alexis wrote the words for Rolfe's operas, like Orpheus and Eurydice (2004). These words are called libretti. In 2014, they worked together again on a series of six poems. Rolfe then used these poems to create a song cycle called Moths.

The Quincunx Cycle: A Series of Novels

In 2014, André Alexis published Pastoral. This was the first book in his special series of five novels called the Quincunx Cycle. These books explore different ideas about philosophy. Alexis had planned this series for a long time.

What is a Quincunx?

Alexis got the idea for his cycle from an old book by Thomas Browne. This book talked about the "quincunx." A quincunx is a pattern of five things, with four at the corners and one in the middle. Think of the dots on a dice showing the number five. The idea is that no matter how you look at this pattern, it always seems straight and orderly. Alexis wanted his books to have a similar kind of hidden pattern or order.

Famous Books in the Cycle

Fifteen Dogs was the second book in the Quincunx Cycle, published in 2015. This book became very popular. It won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. It was also chosen for the Canada Reads competition in 2017, where it was voted the book that all Canadians should read.

The third book in the cycle, The Hidden Keys, came out in 2016. It was actually labeled "Quincunx 4" because Alexis planned to release the books in a different order than their story sequence.

In 2017, Alexis won the important Windham-Campbell Prize. This award recognized all the great writing he had done up to that point. The judges praised his clear writing and how he explored deep questions in his books.

Days by Moonlight (Quincunx 5) was published in 2019. It won Alexis his second Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Completing and Revising the Cycle

While finishing the Quincunx Cycle, Alexis also wrote Metamorphosis: a Viral Trilogy. This was a three-part audio play inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. In 2020, a collection of his short stories called The Night Piece was published.

The fifth and final book in the cycle, Ring (Quincunx 3), was published in 2021.

In 2022, Alexis released Winter, or A Town Near Palgrave. This book was his first work after finishing the Quincunx Cycle. It's about a mysterious group of people in a small town who have strange hibernation practices. However, Alexis later said that the Quincunx Cycle was not truly finished. He plans to rewrite and release all five novels as one big book called A Quincunx. He wants to make sure all the small details are perfect and that the books fit together even better. He sees the cycle like a garden, where he will "get rid of a few of the weeds."

André Alexis continues to live and work in Toronto. He has hosted shows for CBC Radio and writes book reviews for The Globe and Mail. He also teaches writing at the University of Toronto.

Main Works and Awards

• Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa (1994)
• Childhood (1998)
  • Won the Books in Canada First Novel Award
  • Won the Trillium Award (shared)
  • Finalist for the Giller Prize
• Lambton Kent (1999, play)
• Ingrid and the Wolf (2005, children's novel)
  • Nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature
• Asylum (2008)
• Beauty and Sadness (2010)
• A (2013)
• Pastoral (Quincunx 1, 2014)
• Fifteen Dogs (Quincunx 2, 2015)
  • Won the Scotiabank Giller Prize
  • Won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
  • Won the Canada Reads Competition (2017)
• The Hidden Keys (Quincunx 4, 2016)
• Won the Windham-Campbell Prize (2017, for all his work)
• Days by Moonlight (Quincunx 5, 2019)
  • Won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
• The Night Piece: Collected Short Fiction (2020)
• Ring (Quincunx 3, 2021)
• Winter, or A Town Near Palgrave (2022)

See also

In Spanish: André Alexis para niños