Mary Novik was raised in a large family in Victoria, British Columbia and has been passionate about books all her life. She was inspired to write her first novel, Conceit, when she was visiting St. Paul's Cathedral in London and discovered that John Donne's effigy was the only monument that survived the Great Fire of 1666. That night, Mary had a dream in which his daughter Pegge braved the holocaust to rescue her father's statue. Why? From that one question, Conceit began to unfold.
Called "a magnificent novel of seventeenth-century London" by The Globe and Mail, Conceit has been warmly received by book clubs and was chosen as a Book of the Year by both Quill & Quire and The Globe and Mail. It was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller, won The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and was called one of the "top ten hottest new Canadian books" of 2008 by AbeBooks.
Mary lives in Vancouver, where she is writing a novel set in 14th-century Avignon. She is on Twitter as MaryNovik2 and on Facebook as Mary Novik.
A 17th-century backgrounds page, reader's guide to Conceit, photos, news & events, and a blog may be found at Mary's website, http://www.marynovik.com She welcomes visitors and hopes they will leave comments on her contact page.
A new interview with Mary Novik appears at The Book Addict's Guide to Good Books,
http://goodbooksguide.blogspot.com/2009/04/writing-life-mary-novik.html
The UK books blog Juxtabook reviews Conceit here:
http://juxtabook.typepad.com/books/2010/05/conceit-by-mary-novik.html