Began writing in 1991. Was featured in Oberon’s Coming Attractions series in 1994. She is the author of two collections of fiction: My Nose Is A Gherkin Pickle Gone Wrong (Cormorant, 96) and The Roseate Spoonbill Of Happiness (Boheme, 02), and three collections of poetry: The Field Next To Love (Black Moss, 02) and The Life of the Four Stomachs (Black Moss, 06) and Cleavage: A Life In Breasts (Black Moss, 07).
Her short fiction and poetry have been published in most of Canada’s literary magazines, and have won and been shortlisted for many national awards, most recently third place in Prairie Fire’s Creative Non Fiction category. Her work has been in the finals for both the CBC literary competition and the Western Magazine Awards, and her poetry has been broadcast on CBC radio. She has won nine Hamilton and Region Arts Council awards for her poetry, her short fiction and her two full-length books of fiction. The Roseate Spoonbill of Happiness, was shortlisted for the $10,000. Upper Canada Writers’ Craft Award.
Has read her work in many venues, including the Eden Mills festival near Guelph, Harbourfront in Toronto, the Banff Centre in Alberta, at the historic Shakespeare & Company Bookstore in Paris, France in the summer of 2005 and the spring of 2006, and in Vitteau France in May 2006.
The Toronto Star said, of her fiction: “Pilling has a poet’s gift for unlocking the strangeness beneath the familiar; her seductive stories reveal the secret flamboyance under the surfaces of our lives.”
PUBLICATIONS:
Cleavage: A Life In Breasts. Black Moss Press, 2007
The Life Of The Four Stomachs. Black Moss Press, 2006
The Field Next To Love. Black Moss Press, 2002
The Roseate Spoonbill of Happiness. Boheme, 2002
My Nose is a Gherkin Pickle Gone Wrong. Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant, 1996.
AWARDS:
Runner-up, League of Canadian Poets' National Poetry Contest, 1999 and 1998.
Winner, Prairie Fire Postcard Fiction Contest, 1998.
Second place, Prairie Fire Creative Non-Fiction Contest, 1998.
Winner, "Carousel's" Short Story Contest, 1997.
Winner, Okanagan Award for Short Fiction, Spring, 1993.
