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TORONTO, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Austin Clarke, the Toronto-based laureate of multiple prestigious writers prizes, has died at the age of 81, his family confirmed Sunday.
Clarke was the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for his 2002 novel "The Polished Hoe" and won Toronto Book Award in 2009.
Born in Barbados in 1934, Austin "Tom" Clarke moved to Canada in 1955 to attend the University of Toronto. He was sometimes known as "Canada's first multicultural writer."
Clarke became a leader in the North American civil rights movement before publishing his first novel, The Survivors of the Crossing, in 1964.
He went on to write more than two dozen books in various genres, including novels, nonfiction and poetry. His latest work was a memoir, "'Membering," which was published in 2015.
Clarke was best known for his novel "The Polished Hoe," the story of Mary-Matilda, an elderly woman who confesses to a long-ago murder of a plantation owner, sharing her story over the course of a single night to a police officer.
Over the course of his long career, Clarke frequently wrote about the immigrant experience and being black in Canada.
"Certainly, there is no other black Canadian author who has been so heartily embraced as Austin Clarke," wrote literary critic Donna Bailey Nurse in a 2003 profile published by the trade magazine Quill & Quire.
Clarke's death was confirmed by his daughter Darcy Ballantine. She told local media that her father "passed away quietly" after a prolonged illness.
Reynaldo Walcott, a University of Toronto professor, described Clarke as a "brilliant mind who cared deeply about Barbados, Bajans and people from across the Caribbean and Canada."
"Writing has been a mainstay and the most important aspect of my life," Clarke said to CBC Books in 2015. "It shall continue this way until I die."
Clarke became a Canadian citizen in 1981. He was honored as a member of the Order of Canada in 1998.
Clarke's funeral service is scheduled for July 9 at Toronto's St. James Cathedral.
