Madeline Sonik was born in Detroit, Michigan, May 12, 1960. She was of mixed English-Russian parentage.[citation needed]
Sonik was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and at the University of British Columbia, where she earned a doctorate for a thesis that explored the application of Jungian principles to the creative writing process.
She has taught creative writing courses in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, and from 2008 to 2010 was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria. In spring 2015, she served as writer-in-residence at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario.
Her publications include a novel, a short story collection, a children's book, a poetry collection, and a volume of personal essays. In addition, she has coedited three Canadian anthologies and has won many awards for her nonfiction, including the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction (2006). Her novel Arms was described by The Globe and Mail as a "verbal heartache, a bravura performance of language and perverse imagination".[1]
Sonik currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia, where she teaches in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria.