Exit Lines

Exit Lines is the eleventh novel from acclaimed Canadian writer Joan Barfoot, whose work has been compared with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble and Margaret Atwood. Her other novels include Luck, nominated for the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Critical Injuries, longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2001 Trillium Book Award, and Abra, for which she won the 1978 Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her 1982 novel, Dancing in the Dark, was adapted into a movie of the same name, winning three Genie Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay.In 1992 Barfoot won the Marian Engel Award, which the Writers' Trust of Canada annually presents to a female Canadian novelist in mid-career.Joan Barfoot was born and raised in Owen Sound, Ontario. After graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a degree in English literature, she worked as a journalist for various newspapers including the Windsor Star, the Toronto Sun and the London Free Press.Of her transition to fiction writing, Barfoot said in an interview that “it became evident to me that an ambition and desire to be ‘a writer,’ which I’d always felt, was one thing, and a fairly lethargic and lackadaisical thing at that. The actual act of writing is quite different. In fact, until I finally left journalism, thus abandoning my other professional identity, I didn’t call myself ‘a writer’ even though I’d already published several novels. Now, of course, something has to fill the blanks on various forms, so I do. But I still don’t have a business card. What would it say? ‘Joan Barfoot: Thinks, feels, types; re-thinks, re-feels, re-types.’”