The little fictional town of Manawaka was created by Margaret Laurence at the age of fourteen when she had her first short story published after winning a competition in the Winnipeg Free Press. This began a respected and heralded career that established Laurence as one of Canada's foremost writers.
Her most famous collection of short stories was entitled A Bird in the House, and was published in 1970. It is thought to have been semi-autobiographical, and each story is part of a collection that chronicles the young life of a writer by the name of Vanessa MacLeod. It is written as a series of anecdotal memoirs by a forty year old Vanessa. Each short story was originally published as a stand-alone piece, and only brought together by Laurence when she felt that Vanessa had finished telling her story.
Laurence has received many accolades, both academic and commercial; her success as a novelist began with books inspired by her experiences as an ex-pat living in Africa, but her breakthrough work came in 1964 when she published The Stone Angel. Like many of her short stories, the novel is narrated by the protagonist of the story looking back over their life now they have reached an age when they can be objective about it. The book was adapted for the big screen in 2007.
As a result of her success, the Writers' Trust of Canada commissioned an annual lecture series called The Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture; Laurence was named a National Historic Person in 2016 because of her importance to Canadian literature.
