Annabel Lyon


Annabel Lyon is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She has published two collections of short fiction, two young adult novels, and two adult historical novels, The Golden Mean and its sequel, The Sweet Girl.

Life and work

Lyon was born in Brampton, Ontario, north-west of Toronto, but moved to Coquitlam, British Columbia, when she was a year old. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at Simon Fraser University and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In addition, she attended the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Law for one year.
Lyon published her first book, Oxygen, a collection of stories, in 2000. The Best Thing for You, a collection of three novellas, followed in 2004 and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Her first novel, The Golden Mean, which imagines the relationship between Alexander the Great and his teacher, Aristotle, was published in 2009. It held the distinction of being the only book nominated that year for all three of Canada's major fiction prizes: the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Of the three, she won the Rogers Prize. The book has been translated into six languages. A sequel, The Sweet Girl, which explores the life of Aristotle's daughter, Pythias, was published in September 2012.
She lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, one of 13 cities in Metro Vancouver.

Short fiction