Helen Weinzweig (1915–2010), née Tenenbaum, was a Canadian writer.^[1] The author of two novels and a short story collection, her novel Basic Black with Pearls won the Toronto Book Award in 1981, and her short story collection A View from the Roof was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1989.^[1]

Born in Switzerland in 1915 to parents hailing from near Radom, Poland, she emigrated to Canada at age nine with her mother,^[1] and married composer John Weinzweig on July 12, 1940.^[2] She published her first short story, "Surprise!", in Canadian Forum in 1967,^[1] and her debut novel Passing Ceremony was published in 1973.^[1] She came to be regarded as one of Canada's first important feminist writers.^[1] Her style was marked by experimental forms with some aspects of metafiction; in her short story "Journey to Porquis", a writer on a train trip realizes that all of his fellow passengers are characters in his novel.^[1]

Weinzweig also wrote and produced a one-act play, My Mother's Luck,^[3] and several of her short stories in A View from the Roof were adapted for stage and CBC Radio broadcast by playwright Dave Carley.^[3]

Weinzweig died in 2010, aged 94.^[1]

• Passing Ceremony (1973)
• Basic Black with Pearls (1981)
  • in German, transl. Brigitte Jakobeit: Schwarzes Kleid mit Perlen. Wagenbach, Berlin 2019
• My mother's luck (1983)
• A View from the Roof (1989)
• Nero e perle (1994)

Helen Weinzweig papers, Coll. 1945–2003 at the library, University of Toronto

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Location University of Toronto Archives & Records Management Services  Identifiers MS COLL 00603  Source Helen Weinzweig papers
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