Claudia Casper

Casper has taught writing for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, founded by Betsy Warland and at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and was a faculty member at the 2016 Iceland Writers Retreat.

With the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Casper wrote her first novel, The Reconstruction, about a woman who is hired to construct a life-sized model of Lucy—the hominid whose fossilized skeleton and footprints are humankind's link to the other primates in the evolutionary chain—while trying to recreate herself after separating from her husband. Casper says The Reconstruction was "sparked by a desire to explore what it meant to be a woman living today who is descended from Lucy."

"Casper's third novel, The Mercy Journals, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, was released in Canada and the U.S. by Arsenal Pulp Press. Mary Woodbury of eco-fiction.com wrote, "The Mercy Journals offers a view into the near future after climate change results in a far different world than the one we know today, a world in which a Mexican border horror wall comes alive, a world in which the surreal, bizarre, and beautiful begin to triumph via character redemption and hope." Christine Canfield at forewordreviews.com in a starred review wrote, "This complex tale puts global crises and personal crises hand in hand, and questions if morality can stay the same or must adapt." Casper sees her three novels as "a trio about our species: evolution, reproduction and war—light topics, every one."

Her first job in the literary world was at the age of 16, dusting books at Coles bookstore near Yonge and Bloor in Toronto. Casper used the earnings from this job to go on a solo bike trip in Germany on a three-speed bicycle. (Cycling continues to be a large part of her life. In 2010 she participated in the first Gran Fondo ride from Vancouver to Whistler, British Columbia.)

Casper's second novel, The Continuation of Love by Other Means, explores gender conflict through the relationship of a right-leaning father and left-wing daughter in Argentina during the Dirty War. It was published by Penguin in 2003 to critical acclaim (Quill & Quire called Casper a "brave, subtle writer") and short-listed for the Ethel Wilson BC Book Prize.

After a bidding war, The Reconstruction was published in 1996 by Penguin and became a bestseller. The New York Times called it a "probing book," and The Globe and Mail said, "The writing is beautiful, with passages of dazzling poetic intensity on nearly every page." It was optioned for a film and published in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

While writing her second novel, The Continuation of Love by Other Means, Casper also wrote book reviews for The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun. She also published two short pieces, "Dad's Place" in Geist magazine, which also appeared in Best Canadian Stories 96, edited by Douglas Glover and published by Oberon Press in 1996, and "Victory," which appeared in Dropped Threads: What We Aren't Told alongside Margaret Atwood and Miriam Toews, edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson and published by Vintage Canada in 2001.