Matt Cohen

Matthew Cohen (30 December 1942 – 2 December 1999) was a Canadian writer who published both mainstream literature under his own name and children's literature under the pseudonym Teddy Jam. History Matt Cohen was born in Montreal, son of Morris Cohen and Beatrice Sohn, and was raised in Kingston and Ottawa. He studied political economy at the University of Toronto and taught political philosophy and religion at McMaster University in the late 1960s before publishing his first novel Korsoniloff in 1969. His fiction was translated into German, Dutch, French, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish Doctor, his biggest international success, continues to sell well in the French and Spanish markets. His greatest critical success as a writer was his final novel Elizabeth and After which won the 1999 Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction only a few weeks before his death. He had been nominated twice previously, but had not won, in 1979 for The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone and in 1997 for Last Seen.