Tim Wynne-Jones

Two-time Governor General's prize winner for English fiction was Fine Arts student at Waterloo

2001 Arts Alumni Achievement Recipient: Tim Wynne-Jones

Tim Wynne-Jones, an award winning novelist, lyricist, playwright, critic, and children’s writer, is the fourth recipient of the Faculty of Arts Alumni Achievement Award. The award recognizes Waterloo Arts alumni who have made outstanding contributions to their professional field and/or in community and public service. Wynne-Jones graduated from University of Waterloo in 1974 with a BA in Fine Arts and taught visual arts from 1974-78. He later earned his MA in Visual Arts at York University.

In one of the curious twists in the creative process, Tim Wynne-Jones came to his distinguished career as a writer through his work in Fine Arts,

say uWaterloo’s Ann Roberts (Fine Arts) and Ted McGee (English). In an interview published in Canadian Materials, Wynne-Jones describes how he began writing:

when I was drawing and started writing in the margins, I was already thinking in terms of the story behind the picture.

As a writer, Wynne-Jones is one of the most versatile and accomplished with an impressive list of achievements. To date, he has written twenty four books, three of which are adult novels. He won the $50,000 Seal First Novel Award for Odd’s End in 1979. Odd’s End was published in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. It has also been released in France and England as a made-for-tv movie entitled “The House That Mary Bought.” His work is regularly translated into Japanese, French, Dutch, Danish, German, and Italian.

Wynne-Jones is most famous for his writing for children. He has written songs for television’s Fraggle Rock, theme song lyrics for YTV shows, poetry, parodies, short stories, picture books, and novels for adolescents. He has written the libretto and book for an opera, the book and lyrics for a children’s musical, and over a dozen radio plays for the CBC, one of which, St. Anthony’s Man, won the 1988 ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) National Radio Award. Two of his books have won the Governor General’s prize for children’s fiction: in 1993, the collection of short stories, Some of the Kinder Planets, and in 1995, the novel, The Maestro. He has won a dozen other awards including the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Some of the Kinder Planets, the first Canadian to do so.

Since 1982, Wynne-Jones has, on occasion, taught writing at colleges and universities across Canada. He has made many contributions to the writing community, having served as a children’s book columnist with the Toronto Globe & Mail, writer-in-residence at Nepean Public Library in Perth, and children’s book editor with the Red Deer College Press. Since 1997, he has been the core-speaker at the Children’s Literature New England annual institute.

Wynne-Jones is married to writer and artist, Amanda Lewis, and they live near Perth, Ontario, with their three children. He appeared in Waterloo at the fall 2001 convocation to receive the award.