Dennis Bock
The Ash Garden
Dennis Bock was born on the north shore of
Lake Ontario, in the small town of Belleville, and moved from
there with his family to Oakville, just west of Toronto, when
he was six. He entered the University of Western Ontario after
high school, and took one year off during that time to live
in Spain, returning to Madrid in 1989 for 5 years after graduating
with an Honors BA in English and Philosophy. In Madrid he
began writing his collection of connected stories, Olympia,
and worked on it while in residence at Yaddo, the Banff Centre
and the Fundacion Valparadiso, Spain. It was published in
1998 by Bloomsbury US and UK, and by Doubleday Canada. It
won several prizes in the UK and Canada. Olympia won
the Jubilee Award and the Danuta Gleed Award in Canada, as
well as the Betty Trask Prize UK in England. It was also a
Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year in 1998. The
book was nominated for both the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
and the City of Toronto Book Award. That same year he was
married and is known in his neighborhood as the guy with the
cool-looking dog. (biography taken from the RandomHouse website,
www.randomhouse.com)
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