ABOUT AMI SANDS BRODOFF
Ami Sands Brodoff is the award-winning author of three novels and two volumes of stories. The Sleep of Apples, her new story collection centres on nine closely-linked characters who confront crises related to mental illness, mortality, and gender identity. Ami’s novel, In Many Waters, focuses on three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta, and grapples with our current refugee crisis. The White Space Between won The Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Vine Award), and is the story of a mother and daughter struggling with the impact of the Holocaust. Bloodknots, a volume of thematically linked stories about marginalized families on the edge, dramatizes the threads that bind people together and the ones that unravel without warning. Bloodknots was a finalist for The Re-Lit Award. Her debut novel, Can You See Me? penetrates into both the point-of-view of a young man with schizophrenia and the sister who struggles to help him. The novel was nominated for The Pushcart Prize and is a recommended book of NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill).
Ami contributes reviews to The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, The Montreal Review of Books and The Gazette. Essays and articles have appeared in Tablet, Vogue, Self, Elle and The Schizophrenia Bulletin, among many diverse publications. She has ample experience as a fiction writing teacher and mentor, through the Quebec Writers’ Federation, as well as at The Princeton Adult School. Ami is a frequent speaker at Montreal’s Jewish Public Library and her afternoon Book Reviews are a popular, widely attended event. In addition, Ami has taught creative writing to special groups: Fountain House in New York City, a haven for people grappling with schizophrenia, as well as Bates House in New Brunswick, N.J., a half-way house for formerly incarcerated women. She is a participating author in the Writers-In-Cegeps Program and the Writers in-the-Schools Program in Quebec, as well as a workshop leader in the newly launched StoryScaping Program teaching creative writing to teens and seniors in underserved areas of Quebec.
Ami has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo, The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, Fundación Valparaíso, The St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta, among others. She served as the International Representative on the VCCA Fellows Council, a newly created position to help meet the needs of VCCA’s active international programs and international fellows. A native New Yorker, she now makes her home in Montreal with her partner, children, and high energy Brittany Spaniel, Xeno. Follow her at Amisandsbrodoff.com.