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Gil Adamson

Gil Adamson (born Gillian Adamson, 1961) is a Canadian writer. She won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2008 for her 2007 novel The Outlander.

Adamson's first published work was "Primitive," a volume of poetry, in 1991. She followed up with the short story collection "Help Me, Jacques Cousteau" in 1995 and a second volume of poetry, "Ashland," in 2003, as well as multiple chapbooks and a commissioned fan biography of Gillian Anderson, "Mulder, It’s Me," which she coauthored with her sister-in-law Dawn Connolly in 1998.

"The Outlander," a novel set in the Canadian West at the turn of the 20th century, was published by House of Anansi in the spring of 2007 and won the Hammett Prize that year. The novel was later selected for the 2009 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by actor Nicholas Campbell.

Adamson currently lives in Toronto with poet Kevin Connolly.


“Here was a man who wore his scars on the outside and held a merry heart within. How much better that was than its opposite.”
Gil Adamson
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“I loved him right away," she said. "Almost on sight. Some things are so obvious when you look at them. And when that happens there isn't any choice.”
Gil Adamson
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“The dwarf and the woman, lucky miscreants, outlanders, errors that should not exist but lived on anyway. (314)”
Gil Adamson
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“Sometimes Discontent is unknown to the sufferer, a shadowed thing that creeps up from behind. It had been that way for Mary. Of course she knew there were reasons for her unhappiness, there are always reasons. One thinks, I am unhappy, I am discontent, because of this or that. But such thoughts are like a painting of sorrow, not sorrow itself. Then one day it comes, hushed and ferocious, and reasons don’t matter anymore.” - The Outlander by Gil Adamson”
Gil Adamson
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