Amy Spurway was born and raised on Cape Breton, where, at the age of 11, she landed her first writing and performing gigs with CBC Radio. She has worked as a communications consultant, editor, speech-writer, and performer. Her writing has appeared in Today's Parent, the Toronto Star, Babble, and Elephant Journal. She lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Leacock Medal for Humour
Winner: Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Fiction
Shortlisted: Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award
Shortlisted: Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction
Winner: IPPY Award for Best First Book - Fiction
Shortlisted: ReLit Award (Novel Category)

"Spurway's use of language is skilful, making the novel highly readable. Crow is ribald, blunt, accessible, and immediately likeable, tumours and all ... You know how people say, "You'll laugh, you'll cry"? You will. And you will." — Quill & Quire

"Ridiculously good." — Globe and Mail

"Crow delighted me and amazed me the further I read, with its freshness, its daring, its refusal to conform (and the projectile vomiting)." — Pickle Me This

"Angry, petty, disillusioned, sharp-tongued, battered and bruised by the years, prone to snap decisions and judgments, and yet not a little scared of dying at 40, she's a complex and contradictory figure whose narrating tones relay very human traits — fallibility and indomitability, blindness and insight — via homespun, salty language." — Toronto Star

"How can you resolve the sharpness of tragedy into a fairy-tale ending? Somehow, Spurway manages it. But even if she lays the sentimentality on pretty thick, she also proves even a Crow's laughter can be pretty infectious." — Winnipeg Free Press

"Tender, raw, and compassionate, Crow tackles the life-changing events thrown at her and muscles them down to her control, leaving readers breathless in the face of her honesty and hard-earned truths." — Donna Morrissey

"Amy Spurway comes out swinging with this raw, unflinching, and emotionally urgent debut novel. Be forewarned, Crow is as empowering and comic as it is unsettling and disarming. I love it." — Joel Thomas Hynes

"I think Crow is great. It depicts a side of Cape Breton populated by characters that are flawed and achingly real. It's poignant and funny." — Lesley Crewe

"Amy Spurway catches perfectly the engine that is Cape Breton Island. Her cast of divine lunatics, pogey-scammers, gossips, and big-hearted rebels, revealed through Spurway's lively and lucid prose, proves that Cape Breton is still the thought-control centre of Canada." — Wayne Grady

"There is dark desperation and there is the lightness of hope." — Canadian Literature

"Engaging, relentlessly entertaining and written with enormous passion and great wit. Crow is a notable debut, and Amy Spurway is a writer worth watching." — The Fiddlehead

"The most hilarious book I’ve ever read, a narrative voice that gets locked in your head, and a story full of twists and turns and surprises." — All Lit Up