Profile: Wayne Tefs

Writer, editor, and teacher, Wayne Tefs was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Northwestern Ontario. He was educated at the University of Manitoba, the University of Toronto, and McGill University. He was the gold medallist in his graduating class and is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He has taught at a number of Canadian universities and colleges and was Head of English at St John’s-Ravenscourt School in Winnipeg. 

Wayne has published nine novels, as well as a memoir, and he has edited three collections of short fiction.  Numerous articles and journalistic pieces on diverse subjects have appeared in magazines and newspapers.  He has published a number of short stories.  One of these, “Red Rock and After” won the Canadian Magazine Fiction Prize and appeared in The Journey Prize Anthology 1990.  Among the novels he has published, Figures on a Wharf (1983) was finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Prize, Red Rock (1998) was broadcast on the CBC’s Booktime, and Moon Lake (2000) received the Margaret Laurence Prize for Fiction. 

Thrice he has been nominated for the Manitoba Book of the Year Award.  Recently Be Wolf, his book about a doctor who survived an ordeal in Canada’s remote north despite a broken back was released.  His own story of survival, Rollercoaster: A Cancer Journey (2002), has taken him to speak all over the US and Canada.  He is active in the literary world, serving on juries, mentoring younger writers, editing manuscripts, and the like.  When he isn’t writing or reading or cooking, he plays hockey, cross-country skis, and cycles: every summer he and his wife go over stages of the Tour de France.  Wayne Tefs lives in Winnipeg with his wife and son.