Andrew Unger | |
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| Born | November 8, 1979 Winnipeg, Manitoba |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of Manitoba |
| Period | 2010s–present |
| Notable works | Once Removed , The Best of the Bonnet |
| Website | |
| andrewunger | |
Andrew Unger (born November 8, 1979) [1] is a Canadian novelist and satirist. He is the author of the satirical news website The Unger Review (formerly The Daily Bonnet), as well as the novel Once Removed and the collection The Best of the Bonnet. [2] [3]
Since 2010, Unger has been a contributor to numerous publications including The Globe and Mail , Geez , CBC.ca , and Ballast . [4] [5] Early in his career, he also wrote and published fiction and poetry, sometimes publishing under the pen name Andrew J. Bergman, as well as working as a ghostwriter for New York-based Kevin Anderson & Associates. [6]
In 2016 Unger founded the Mennonite satirical news website The Daily Bonnet and, along with his wife Erin Koop Unger, the non-satirical website Mennotoba in 2017. [7] Since 2016, Unger has written more than two thousand Daily Bonnet articles. [6] The website has been visited millions of times each year and has been cited in debate in the Manitoba Legislature [8] and used as an example of Mennonite humour in the Canadian House of Commons. [9] [10] [11]
In 2020 Unger's novel Once Removed was released by Turnstone Press. [12] [13] The novel, which tells the story of a struggling writer trying to preserve his town's fading history, won the 2021 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book and was a finalist for the 2020 Margaret McWilliams Award. [14] [15] [16]
In late 2021, Unger released a collection of Daily Bonnet articles called The Best of the Bonnet, also published by Turnstone Press. [17]
In 2023, Unger changed the name of The Daily Bonnet to The Unger Review, while maintaining The Daily Bonnet as a section of the website. [18] [19]
Unger cites Jonathan Swift, Sinclair Lewis, Armin Wiebe, Billy Wilder, and Miriam Toews among his writing influences. [20] His work has been described as Horatian satire by scholar Nathan Dueck and compared to Armin Wiebe and Arnold Dyck by scholar Robert Zacharias. [21]
The son of a Mennonite minister father and book-keeper mother, Unger was born in Winnipeg in 1979 and lived in Steinbach, Brandon and Calgary as a child before returning to Steinbach as an adult. [22] From his father's side, he is a direct descendant of Kleine Gemeinde founder Klaas Reimer, while his maternal grandfather fled to Canada from the Soviet Union as a refugee in the 1920s. [23]
As a child he turned to satire, drawing political cartoons, particularly of Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. [24] Unger attended Providence University College in the late 1990s and holds degrees from the University of Manitoba. He has taught English Language Arts, including satire and creative writing, at Steinbach Regional Secondary School since 2005. [25] [26]
Unger lives in Steinbach, Manitoba and is married to Erin Koop Unger, author of Mennotoba. [27]
In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Unger successfully advocated for the Manitoba government to create vaccine stickers in the Mennonite dialect of Plautdietsch. [28] [29]
In 2024, Unger initiated a fundraiser to place a historic plaque in front of author Miriam Toews's former home in Steinbach. [30]
Patrick Frank Friesen is a Canadian author born in Steinbach, Manitoba, primarily known for his poetry and stage plays beginning in the 1970s.
Kelvin Goertzen is a Canadian politician who served as the 23rd premier of Manitoba from September to November, 2021. A member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba, he is a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba for Steinbach, first elected in the 2003 provincial election, and was re-elected in 2007, 2011, 2016, 2019 and most recently in 2023. Goertzen served as interim leader of the PC party, from September 1, 2021 to October 30, 2021. He was sworn as premier on September 1, 2021. Goertzen was succeeded as premier on the afternoon of November 2, 2021, by Heather Stefanson who won the PC leadership election on October 30. Goertzen, upon his swearing-in, selected Rochelle Squires as his deputy premier. Goertzen resumed his role as Deputy Premier of Manitoba on November 3, 2021. His final posts in the Stefanson Government were Government House Leader, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and Minister responsible for Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI). He currently serves as the Deputy Leader of the PC Party alongside Kathleen Cook.
Steinbach is the third-largest city in the province of Manitoba, Canada and, with a population of 17,806, the largest community in the Eastman region. The city, located about 58 km (36 mi) southeast of the provincial capital of Winnipeg, is bordered by the Rural Municipality of Hanover to the north, west, and south, and the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie to the east. Steinbach was first settled by Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine in 1874, whose descendants continue to have a significant presence in the city today. Steinbach is found on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, while Sandilands Provincial Forest is a short distance east of the city.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Mennonite Heritage Village is a museum in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada telling the story of the Low German Mennonites in Canada. The museum contains both an open-air museum open seasonally, and indoor galleries open year-round. Opened in 1967 and expanded significantly since then, the Mennonite Heritage Village is a major tourist attraction in the area and officially designated as a Manitoba Signature Museum and Star Attraction. Approximately 47,000 visitors visit the museum each year.
Armin Wiebe is a Canadian writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, best known for his humorous novels about Mennonites. Wiebe is regarded as one of the pioneers of humorous Mennonite writing in English and is known for his incorporation of Plautdietsch words within his English texts.
Kleine Gemeinde is a Mennonite denomination founded in 1812 by Klaas Reimer in the Russian Empire. The current group primarily consists of Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in Belize, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as a small presence in Canada and the United States. In 2015 it had some 5,400 baptized members. Most of its Canadian congregations diverged from the others over the latter half of the 20th century and are now called the Evangelical Mennonite Conference.
Turnstone Press is a Canadian literary publisher founded in 1976 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the oldest in Manitoba and among the most respected independent publishers in Canada.
Irma Voth (2011) is the fifth novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel, about a Mennonite teenager whose life is transformed when a bohemian film crew comes to her settlement to make a film about Mennonites, was informed by Toews' experience as lead actress in Silent Light, the award-winning 2007 film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
The Daily Bonnet is a satirical Mennonite website, known as The Unger Review as of 2023. It was created by Andrew Unger and launched in May 2016. It features news stories and editorials, with the structure of conventional newspapers, but whose content is contorted to make humorous commentary on Mennonite and Anabaptist issues.
The Privilegium of 1873 is the original invitation letter from the Dominion of Canada to Mennonites living in the Russian Empire offering them land, military exemption, and private schools, among other privileges. Because of their pacifist beliefs, Mennonites were known to migrate to other countries in order to maintain their lifestyles. When migrating, they signed agreements with their host countries. These agreements were known as Privilegium or "Privileges." A similar Privilegium had been signed with Catherine the Great of Russia when Mennonites first immigrated from Prussia to the Russian Empire in the 1770s.
John Peter Thiessen was a Canadian Russian Mennonite teacher, translator, and writer from Manitoba. Alongside Arnold Dyck and Reuben Epp, he was an important contributor to the development of Mennonite Low German literature, as well as one of the language's most prominent lexicographers.
Mennonite literature emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century as both a literary movement and a distinct genre. Mennonite literature refers to literary works created by or about Mennonites.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Manitoba is a viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Women Talking (2018) is the seventh novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. Toews describes her novel as "an imagined response to real events," the gas-facilitated rapes that took place on the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia: Between 2005 and 2009, over a hundred girls and women in the colony woke up to discover that they had been raped in their sleep. These nighttime attacks were denied or dismissed by colony elders until finally it was revealed that a group of men from the colony were spraying an animal anaesthetic into their victims' houses to render them unconscious. Toews' novel centers on the secret meetings of eight Mennonite women who, on behalf of the other women in the colony, must decide how to react to these traumatic events. They have only 48 hours before the colony men, who are away to post bail for the rapists, return.
Once Removed is a novel by Canadian author Andrew Unger published in 2020. Published by Turnstone Press, the book is a satire set in the fictional town of Edenfeld, Manitoba and tells the story of Timothy Heppner, a ghostwriter trying to preserve the history of his small Mennonite town.
Summer of My Amazing Luck is the first novel by the Canadian author Miriam Toews published in 1996 by Turnstone Press.
MaryLou Driedger is a Canadian journalist and Young Adult fiction novelist from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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