Miriam Toews (born 1964) is a Canadian writer and journalist. She was raised in a Mennonite family in Steinbach, Manitoba. She graduated from the University of Manitoba and King’s College University. She has published in “The Guardian” and “The New York Times Magazine”. Toews has won over twenty awards, including the most important Canadian literary awards – the Doris Giller Award and the Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson Award from the Canadian Writers’ Association. She received the Brooklyn Public Library Award for “Women talking”, as well as a nomination for the Governor General’s Award and the Reading Women Award. The book was also included in the lists of the best titles of the year in many magazines, including “The New York Times Book Review”, “The Washington Post”, “Slate”, “Kirkus Review” and “Time”. In 2022, an adaptation of the novel directed by Sarah Polley hit the big screen. The cast included Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, Claire Foy and Jesse Buckley, and the film itself was nominated for an Oscar in the main category and won the prestigious statuette for Best Adapted Screenplay (which Polley herself received). It was this, the most popular and most acclaimed, work of Miriam Toews that lent its name to the Maltese series of meetings, which will make the voices of female writers and artists resound strongly and clearly.

Miriam Toews is also the author of the moving story about her father “Swing Low: A Life” and eight novels, including those published in Poland (right next to “Women Talking”) “All My Puny Sorrows” and “Fight Night”. The writer also played the main role in the Cannes-winning film “Silent Light”.