Taking My Life

Jane Rule was born in New Jersey in 1931 and came to Canada in 1956, where she later taught at the University of British ­Columbia. Her first novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), in which two women fall in love in 1950s Reno, Nevada, was successful as a 1985 feature film titled Desert Hearts.

Rule emerged as one of the most respected writers in Canada with her many novels, essays, and collections of short stories, ­including Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975). She received the Canadian Authors Association best novel and best short story awards, the American Gay Academic Literature Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dignity Award of Merit, the Canadian ­National Institute for the Blind's Talking Book of the Year Award, and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of British Columbia.

In 1996, Jane Rule received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia. She passed away in 2007.