Margaret Sweatman writes novels, stories, plays, song lyrics, poetry, libretti, essays. She's also a musician and performer.

Her novels have won the McNally Robinson and the Margaret Laurence Awards a couple of times, as well as the Rogers Writers Trust Award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Carol Shields Award. Her plays have been produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange, Popular Theatre Alliance, and the Guelph Spring Festival. She has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the National Academy Orchestra, as well as with her own Broken Songs Band (vocals and harmonica).

       • Here's Margaret with the Broken Songs Band: https://dreamplay.ca/track/im-love-sleep-317

       • With her husband, composer Glenn Buhr, Margaret won a Genie Award 2005 for Best Song in Canadian Film. Here's the song, When Wintertime, from the film Seven Times Lucky: https://dreamplay.ca/node/229.

       • Here’s a link to the song cycle, Red Sea: music by Glenn Buhr, Margaret’s libretto, with Sarah Slean vocals and the NUMUS Chamber Orchestra: https://dreamplay.ca/node/130

Margaret is the author of the novels Fox, Sam and Angie, When Alice Lay Down with Peter, The Players, Mr. Jones, The Gunsmith’s Daughter, and the forthcoming Night Birds.

Night Birds, her seventh novel, is a story about gold mining, money laundering, and the subconscious. It’s a story about deception – of others and of oneself – set in folly architecture: an ox-bow on a prairie river; a derelict summer-home at a Canadian lake that resembles Carl Jung’s tower near Lake Zurich; and an open-pit gold mine near Roşia Montană, a village in Transylvania, Romania.

Margaret’s one-act play, Fracas, is the result of years of work with the wonderful choreographer/dancer/director, Marie-Josée Chartier and director Arne MacPherson. A video of Fracas, with Chartier, joined by actor Sébastien Labelle, and recorded live before an audience at Output Studio in Winnipeg is available here: https://dreamplay.ca/node/461

She is currently involved with a revision of a work of musical theatre with Glenn Buhr. Anna’s Dream Play is a tragicomedy. Anna is the ruler of Scotland between the 12th and 13th centuries. The story is in a spiral of dreams set in a fantastical medieval Scotland, but the politics reflect our current vulnerability to imperial aggression from a more powerful neighbour. You can find 5 songs from the musical here: https://dreamplay.ca/node/462

Contact: msweatman@shaw.ca

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    Here are some reviews for six of Margaret Sweatman's novels.

 

• The Gunsmith’s Daughter (2022):

“I was thrilled by The Gunsmith’s Daughter, by how cinematic and engrossing it is, what big questions it asks.”
        — Joan Thomas, author of Five Wives

“An astute and subtle interrogation of a young woman’s struggle to forge her own path amidst a bloody conflict and in the shadow of the sometimes wildly profitable business of other people’s suffering. Margaret Sweatman is a writer of deep emotional insight, and in Lilac Welsh she has created a vivid, complex character caught between warring currents of ambition and familial loyalty. There is a cold fire that burns through this novel.”
        — Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise

“In this beautifully written and tightly plotted novel, Margaret Sweatman gives us a searing look into ourselves. Lilac Welsh is faced with a moral dilemma. She loves her father but is conflicted about the way he makes his living – he makes guns that kill people. Set in the time of the Vietnam War, Lilac’s dilemma is Canada’s: we criticize U.S. foreign policy, even while our economic well-being remains entangled in America’s. The Gunsmith’s Daughter delivers uncomfortable home truths as sharply and poetically as George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man.”
        — Wayne Grady, author of The Good Father

“… a gripping coming-of-age / adventure story of a young woman’s awakening into a world much larger and more dangerous and morally complex than she’d imagined.… a relentlessly engaging and suspenseful novel. The Gunsmith’s Daughter, possessing the forward thrust of a whodunit, makes for compulsive reading and is clearly the work of a seasoned writer who knows what she’s doing every step of the way.”
        — Atlantic Books Today

“Throughout the novel, dialogue sparkles with authenticity and wit comparable to the novels of Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Bothers, French Exit). Sweatman’s unpredictable but convincing snippets of conversation go a long a long way in revealing the characters and their relationships, particularly the complex relationship between Lilac and her father.”
        — The Winnipeg Free Press
 

• Mr. Jones (2014):

“Mr. Jones is suspenseful, evocative and astonishing in scope. Here is communism as it unfolds in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s, the repercussions of the cold war, espionage, and the explosive co-mingling of idealism and ambition. Margaret Sweatman writes all the dangerous fires – bravery, betrayal, loyalty and love. Prose as lyrical and transparent as Ondaatje, as politically astute and fiercely clear-eyed as Didion. This novel burns bright.”
        — Lisa Moore, author of February and Caught

“The paranoid ’50s cracked open in unlikely places. Sleek, believable—essential too, like the missing pieces in a long abandoned puzzle.”
        — Fred Stenson, author of The Great Karoo

“One thing is certain: Emmett Jones is a fascinating new protagonist on the Canadian literary scene.”
        — Linda Diebel, Toronto Star

“Margaret Sweatman outdoes herself again in scope and skill level in Mr. Jones.”
        — Elizabeth Hopkins, Winnipeg Free Press

“A story of the clash between private lives and politics at a time when it was impossible to separate the two.”
        — Tom Jokinen, The Globe and Mail

“It is the relationships between her cast of characters that truly forms the arc of this story, their loyalties to one another as well as their betrayals.”
        — Elin Thordarson, The Winnipeg Review

“Mr. Jones is an electric, compelling, scintillating read.”
        — Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This

“One of the pleasures of this novel is Sweatman’s vivid evocation of the fear and paranoia that pervaded the Cold War from 1946 to the early 1960s.”
        — Bob Douglas, Critics at Large
 

• The Players (2009):

“Sweatman brings a wonderful sense of flair to the proceedings, finessing new methods of viewing the world. Her eyes and ears tend toward the poetic, reminding one at times of Michael Ondaatje’s texture-heavy texts, but Sweatman has a lighter touch.”
        — Corey Redekop, Shelf Monkey

“Margaret Sweatman’s historical novel is far grittier and realistic than the period pieces you’ll see on TV or at the movie theatre. And more erotic, too… Sweatman’s writing flows as smoothly as a muscular northern river, with a stunning control of voice. She keeps the reader engaged every moment, introducing us to a company of intriguing characters.”
        — Mark Frutkin, The Globe and Mail

“Margaret Sweatman’s The Players is the kind of novel that just feeds the desire for and appreciation of good writing. I read it and loved it as a reader, but I appreciated it, and was inspired by it, as a writer as well…”
        — Inkslinger, The Over Decorated Bookcase

“The Players is a magical tale, much akin to Douglas Glover’s Elle and Bill Gaston’s The Order of Good Cheer.…this is a wonderfully humourous tale filled with playful language.”
        — Andrew Armitage, The Sun Times
 

• When Alice Lay Down with Peter (2001):

“You heard it here first – this is the best novel on the fall list…”
        — Patricia Robertson, The Calgary Herald

“When Alice Lay Down with Peter is wildly ambitious – how many Canadian novelists have taken on the whole of the 20th century? – yet the author is in control of her material… Somehow, the historical events, personal tragedies, male impersonations, births and deaths all come together in a book that hurtles forward with wit and vitality, is deeply satisfying and inspiring.”
        — Charlotte Gray, The National Post
 

• Sam and Angie (1996):

“… gripping .. the elegance and precision and beauty with which the story is told.”
        — Letters in Canada
 

• Fox (1992, reissued in 2017):

“… an utterly brilliant novel … both intimate and epic.”
        — The Globe and Mail

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    Reviews of three plays by Margaret Sweatman:

• Fox (Prairie Theatre Exchange):

“Margaret Sweatman, the Winnipeg novelist turned playwright who is responsible for this powerfully ironic drama about the sexuality of politics and the politics of sexuality, has broken through the surface of the era with the diamond drill of contemporary feminist thought.”
        — Winnipeg Free Press

• Hectic (Popular Theatre Alliance):

“Sweatman has remained true to her compelling subjects. She has captured their individuality, humor, intelligence and the strength of human spirit needed to survive lives scarred by grinding poverty, substance abuse, and family violence … Hectic is an ambitious, risky venture.”
        — Winnipeg Sun

• Flux (Theatre Projects):

“On many levels, Flux is superbly entertaining. The story has more than its share of twists and cliff-hangers, and like any fine parody relies to some degree on historical facts. … Much of Flux is funny, and a great deal of it is wondrous.”
        — The Record, Kitchener-Waterloo