Fonds F0141 - Cecelia Frey fonds.

Canadian poet, novelist, and short-story writer Cecelia Frey was born in 1936 on a homestead near Padstow south of Mayorthorpe, Alberta. She moved to Edmonton where she worked as a social worker and librarian and attended the University of Alberta where she received a BA in Philosophy. In 1970, she launched her writing career by attending the University of Calgary where she took a writing course with W.O. Mitchell, going on to receive an MA in English. Her thesis, Organizing Unorganized Space: Prairie Aesthetic in the Poetry of Eli Mandel, is concerned with the impact of undefined space on creative consciousness.

She has since worked as a freelance writer, editor and teacher. An organizer and producer of the Calgary Creative Reading Series, she served as fiction editor of Dandelion Magazine from 1983-1988.

Frey is the author of novels: Breakaway; The Prisoner of Cage Farm; A Fine Mischief; A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing; The Long White Sickness; Moments of Joy; Lovers Fall Back to Earth. Her poetry collections include: the least you can do is sing; Songs Like White Apples Tasted; And Still I Hear Her Singing; reckless women; Under Nose Hill; North. Frey’s short story collections include The Nefertiti Look; The Love Song of Romeo Paquette; and Salamander Moon. Her play, The Dinosaur Connection, was produced on CBC’s Vanishing Point series in 1988. She also authored the non-fiction book Phyllis Webb: An Annotated Bibliography of Canada’s Major Authors Series (for ECW Press 1985).

Her short stories and poetry have been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies as well as being broadcast on CBC radio and performed on the Women’s Television Network.
Her novel, A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing, was shortlisted for the 2009 Writer's Guild of Alberta George Bugnet Fiction Award and she is a three-time recipient of the WGA Short Fiction Award. Her novel, Lovers Fall Back to Earth, was a finalist for the 2019 International Book Awards (Fiction-Literary). She was the 2018 recipient of the WGA Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award and has also won awards for playwriting.

Frey lives in Calgary, Alberta, where “she is responsible for 3 children, 6 grandchildren.”

Biographical information is available in The Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, p. 399.