From scratch

Gail Kathryn Anderson-Dargatz (born November 14, 1963) is a Canadian novelist. Anderson-Dargatz was born in Kamloops, British Columbia, and grew up in Salmon Arm. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and taught in the MFA program at UBC. She published her debut short story collection The Miss Hereford Stories in 1994, and received a nomination for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1995. Her first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning (1996), was an experimental yet accessible work whose story unfolded partly through narrative and partly through a collection of recipes and household tips belonging to the narrator's mother. A Canadian bestseller that year, it won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and was nominated for the Giller Prize and the Books in Canada First Novel Award.