Biography

Miriam Toews was born in 1964 in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. She is a writer and actress, known for Women Talking (2022), Silent Light (2007) and All My Puny Sorrows (2021).

A writer is nothing but a rendering plant, a place where things go, things that were once alive, to get turned into something else.

The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. It's not even a conscious searching. It happens even when you're buying groceries and when you're fast asleep. It's a curse. A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on, like the tingling of a sore throat.

There's laughter in life. Humour and jokes and laughter can be the kind of thing that is weaponized in a sense, but also it's just purely survival. There's comedy in the world. It's my outlook. It's how I see the world. It's a very funny place. It's a tragic, dark horrifying place, but it's also very funny.