Martha Ostenso

Born in Norway and raised in Manitoba, she became closely associated with prairie writing in Canada and the United States. She studied in Manitoba and later at Columbia University, where her writing career began to take shape.

Her breakthrough came with Wild Geese in 1925, a novel that won a major prize and brought her international attention. Readers were drawn to her dramatic storytelling, strong sense of place, and interest in family conflict, desire, and the pressures of rural life.

She went on to publish many novels and stories over the following decades. Although Wild Geese remains her best-known book, her broader body of work reflects a long and productive career spent exploring ambition, loneliness, power, and the pull of the land.