Elvira Cordileone's Biography

        The daughter of  Italian immigrants,  Elvira Cordileone came to Canada in the early 1950s. She grew up in Montreal during the turbulence of Quebec’s cultural revolution. Her memoir, Elvie: Girl Under Glass, tells the poignant story of growing up in the cross-currents of three cultures and languages: Italian at home, French learned on the streets from kids with whom she shared the east-end downtown neighbourhood, and educated by English-speaking Catholic nuns.

        Even so, life would have been immeasurably easier if she hadn't also been forced to cope with a brutal, controlling father who abused his wife and terrorized his children, resulting in life-long consequences for all of them.       

        In spite of the hardships, Elvira worked her way through school to earn a bachelor's degree in English literature from Sir George Williams (now Concordia) in the early 1970s.       

        In the decade after graduation she took on and quit many jobs but struggled to find her niche -- secretarial positions, child care worker in a prison for adolescent girls, publications manager for a business association, magazine production for a national media company before fleeing Montreal for Toronto in the early 1980s as Quebec contemplated separating from Canada.

        In Toronto she eventually landed a job in the Toronto Star's newsroom, where she happily remained for twenty-two years until taking a buy-out in 2010.              

        Since then, in addition to the release of Elvie: Girl Under Glass, Elvira has written an as-yet-unpublished thriller, The Fury, and is at work on its sequel, a mystery entitled Blood Ties, which is set in Itay. 

      She lives in Toronto.