Born on March 19, 1948 in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gunnars immigrated to Canada in 1969. She began to teach creative writing at the University of Alberta in 1990. More than a decade later she moved to the Sunshine Coast and used her new surroundings as the locale for her collection Any Day But This (Red Deer $29.95) in which one woman realizes she belongs to a class she secretly despises. Gunnars' collection of essays on writing is Stranger at the Door: Writers and the Act of Writing. Her books have received the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for poetry, the Georges Bugnet Award for fiction and the McNally-Robinson Award for fiction.

BOOKS:

One-Eyed Moon Maps. Victoria, B.C.: Press Porcepic, 1980.

Settlement Poems 1. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1980.

Settlement Poems 2. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1980.

Wake-Pick Poems. Toronto: Anansi, 1982.

The Night Workers of Ragnarok. Toronto: Press Porcepic, 1985.

Water, Waiting. Toronto: Underwhich Editions, 1987.

Carnival of Longing. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1989.

Exiles Among You. Regina: Coteau Books, 1996.

The Guest House and Other Stories. Toronto: Anansi.

Stranger at the Door: Writers and the Act of Writing. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.

Any Day But This. Red Deer Press, 2004.

[BCBW 2004] "Fiction" "Icelandic"