Kenneth J. Harvey

Kenneth Joseph Thomas Harvey (born January 22, 1962) is a Canadian writer and filmmaker from Newfoundland and Labrador. Harvey's debut short story collection, Directions for an Opened Body, was published in 1990., and was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He followed up in 1992 with his first novel, Brud, which was a shortlisted finalist for the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1993. His 2003 novel The Town That Forgot How to Breathe was his first book to be republished in the United States, and was the winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Award in 2004. The novel also won Italy's Libro del Mare for best book about the sea. In 2006, his novel Inside won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Winterset Award, and was longlisted for the 2006 Giller Prize. His 2008 novel Blackstrap Hawco was longlisted for the Giller Prize in 2008. As a filmmaker Harvey is most noted for his 2018 documentary film Immaculate Memories: The Uncluttered Worlds of Christopher Pratt, a profile of artist Christopher Pratt which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019, and won the award for Best Canadian Film at the 2019 International Festival of Films on Art. In 2000, with his wife Janet, Harvey founded the ReLit Awards, an annual award for independent Canadian literature. Management of the ReLits was taken over in 2021 by his daughter, Katherine Alexandra Harvey.