Claudia Maria Cornwall

Claudia Maria Cornwall (born Claudia Maria Wiener, 1948 in Shanghai, China) is a Canadian writer and journalist. Her second non-fiction book, the autobiographical Letter from Vienna: A Daughter Uncovers her Family's Jewish Past won the 1996 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.

Claudia Maria Cornwall
Born
Claudia Maria Wiener

1948 (age 72–73)
Shanghai, China
NationalityCanadian
EducationPh.D.
Alma materUniversity of Calgary
OccupationWriter and journalist
Years active1975–present
Notable work
Letter from Vienna: A Daughter Uncovers her Family's Jewish Past
Spouse(s)Gordon Cornwall
AwardsHubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Websiteofficial website

Biography

Claudia Maria Cornwall was born in Shanghai in 1948 as Claudia Maria Wiener and immigrated to Canada in 1949 with her parents, where she was baptized in the Anglican Church. She grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia and studied philosophy at the University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary. There she completed her Ph.D. with the thesis The evolution of persons (1975).[1]

She worked as a freelance journalist and writer, publishing in The Globe and Mail, Reader's Digest (within the Canadian, International, and Chinese editions), BC Business, and online magazine Tyee.[1] Her first book, Print-Outs: The Adventures of a Rebel Computer (1982), was a fantasy story for children and adolescents.[2]

For a long time, her parents withheld information about her family history in Austria. A letter to an uncle in Vienna, in which she asked for a picture of her father, Walter Wiener,[3] as a youth, revealed the further truth. Her grandmother had died in a concentration camp and her parents were of Jewish origin. In the following years, she collected the letters within her family, the official papers, the pocket diary of her grandfather, Willy Frensdorff,[4] and undertook research trips to Germany and Austria to interview and reunite the remaining family members. On the basis of this work, Cornwall wrote the critically acclaimed and internationally accepted book Letter from Vienna: A Daughter Uncovers her Family's Jewish Past (1995).[5][6][7][8][9] It won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1996.[10]

In March 2009, Cornwall received a $20,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to support its series on health care and research. This series culminated in their sixth book project, Catching Cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial causes, which was released in March 2013.[1][11][12]

In the years that followed, Cornwall focused her publications on biographies of artists from around Vancouver. This includes her 2011 biography of the late Curtis Earle Lang, a photographer and businessman with a Beatnik background, who had a twelve-year friendship with her husband. Cornwall also enlisted the technical skills of her brother, Greg, for the processing of Lang's photographic legacy.[13] This book was well received by literary critics[14][15][16] and nominated for the 2012 City of Vancouver Book Award.[17][18]

Cornwall gives seminars on creative writing of memoirs at Simon Fraser University and Douglas College in British Columbia.[1][19]

The writer is married to Gordon Cornwall,[20] and has a daughter and a son who work at a university.[1]

Works
  • Cornwall, Claudia Maria (1982). Print-outs: The adventures of a rebel computer. Vancouver, BC: Nerve Press. ISBN 9780919325005.
  • Cornwall, Claudia Maria (1995). Letter from Vienna: A Daughter Uncovers her Family's Jewish Past'. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 1-55054-115-3.
  • Lazarus, Eve; Cornwall, Claudia Maria; Newbold Patterson, Wendy (2009). The life and art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, LeRoy Jensen. Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother Tongue Publishing. ISBN 978-1-896949-02-4.
  • Cornwall, Claudia Maria (2011). At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver, 1937–1998. Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother Tongue Publishing. ISBN 978-1-896949-17-8.[21]
  • Cornwall, Claudia Maria (2013). Catching cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial causes. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-1522-1.
  • Cornwall, Claudia Maria (2016). Battling Melanoma: One Couple's Struggle from Diagnosis to Cure. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1442245150.

Awards and nominations
  • 1996 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for Letter from Vienna
  • 2009 Award of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • 2012 Shortlist for the City of Vancouver Book Award for At the World's Edge[17][18]

References
  1. "Claudia Cornwall". Claudia Cornwall. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
  2. "Print-Outs: The Adventures of a Rebel Computer". AbeBooks Inc. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
  3. de:Peter Kuckuk (2004). Passagen nach Fernost: Menschen zwischen Bremen und Ostasien [Passages to the Far East: people between Bremen and East Asia]. Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte Bremens (in German). 23. Bremen: University of Bremen. p. 156.
  4. Peter Kuckuk (2004). Passagen nach Fernost: Menschen zwischen Bremen und Ostasien [Passages to the Far East: people between Bremen and East Asia]. Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte Bremens (in German). 23. Bremen: University of Bremen. p. 157.
  5. "Book Reviews - Holocaust and Genocide Studies" (PDF). Oxford Press. 1 October 1996. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
  6. Sicher, Efraim (1998). "Zur Rezeption" [To the reception]. Breaking Crystal: Memory and Writing after Auschwitz (in German). Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 16.
  7. Forman, Frieda; Maier, Cynthia (1997). "Jewish Women's Voices: Past and Present. A Bibliography". Women in Judaism. A multidisciplinary Journal. Women's Educational Resources Centre, University of Toronto. 1 (1). Retrieved 27 September 2012.
  8. Fast, Vera K. (2010). Children's Exodus: A History of the Kindertransport. London: I.B.Tauris Publishers. pp. 237.
  9. Sonnenschein, Bronia; Sonnenschein, Dan J. Victory Over Nazism: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey. Vancouver: Memory Press. pp. 41 and 137.
  10. "Awards 1996". www.canadianauthors.net. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
  11. "Claudia Cornwall". www.leckeragency.com. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  12. "Catching Cancer". Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  13. "Claudia Cornwall". ABCbookworld.com. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  14. Turner, Michael (2011). "Vancouver Re-Remembered". Geist. The Geist Foundation. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  15. Beers, David (2 November 2011). "A Bohemian Vancouver, Lost and Found. Claudia Cornwall's bio of Curt Lang retrieves a past much friendlier to creative vagabonds". The Tyee. The Tyee. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  16. Jeffries, Bill. "At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver, 1937–1998 by Claudia Cornwall". BC Studies. University of British Columbia. Archived from the original on 14 August 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  17. "City of Vancouver Book Award". City of Vancouver. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  18. "City of Vancouver Book Award announces shortlist". Quill & Quire. St. Joseph Media. 13 September 2012. Archived from the original on 2 December 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  19. "Continuing Studies: Claudia Cornwall". Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser University. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  20. "H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online". Michigan State University. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016.
  21. "Vorstellung und Reviewzusammenfassung" [Presentation and review summary] (in German). www.artsland.com. 1 December 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
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