Carol Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and studied at Hanover College and the University of Exeter. She moved to Canada, became a Canadian citizen and earned an MA at the University of Ottawa in 1975. She lived in Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg and, from 2000, Victoria.
The Stone Diaries (1993) won the Governor General's Award and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the only novel to have won both. Larry's Party won the Orange Prize in 1998. She died in Victoria, British Columbia, in 2003.