Jenny Heijun
Wills
Jenny Heijun Wills is the author of the memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related., which won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the Eileen McTavish Sykes best first book award, and was named a best book of the year by The Globe and Mail and CBC. She writes about race and ethnicity both as a scholar of literary and cultural studies and as a creative writer. She has lived, studied, and worked in Toronto, Montreal, Boston, and Seoul, and holds a PhD in English literary studies. Wills is the 2020–2023 Chancellor’s Research Chair at The University of Winnipeg in Manitoba.
Videos
Jenny Heijun Wills' award-winning Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.
Award History
2019 Winner
Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfictionfor Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.: A Memoir
Jury Citation
"Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.: A Memoir is a poignant story of the untidy family life that unfolds when Jenny Heijun Wills travels from Montreal to Seoul to find the biological parents who gave her up for adoption in her infancy. Braving heartbreak and the risk of forever losing her way, Wills journeys through the emotional terrain of home, bonding, and belonging with exceptional poise. Finely observed, meticulous, and candid, this memoir offers its subjects no easy redemptions, only the chance to grow together towards greater understanding. Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. captures Canada at its richest, deeply rooted in home while also very much part of the world."
— 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury (Ivan Coyote, Trevor Herriot, and Manjushree Thapa)
