Trevor Cole (writer)
Trevor Cole, born Trevor William Cole on February 15, 1960, in Toronto, is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He has published five novels. His first two books, Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life (2004) and The Fearsome Particles (2006), were nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
His father was a theatre and television actor. Before writing fiction, Cole worked as a radio copywriter, magazine editor, and journalist. He spent about 15 years at The Globe and Mail, first as an editor and then as a senior writer for the Report on Business Magazine. He left the Globe in 2000. From 2001 to 2003, he wrote a satirical business column for Canadian Business.
Cole has won nine National Magazine Awards, including three gold medals, and he continues to write freelance for Toronto Life, Report on Business Magazine, and other publications. In 2006, he started AuthorsAloud.com, a site with short audio readings by Canadian authors.
McClelland & Stewart published his first three novels: Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life (2004), The Fearsome Particles (2006), and Practical Jean (2010). Practical Jean won the 2011 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. His fourth novel, Hope Makes Love, was published in 2015 by Cormorant Press. In 2017 he wrote The Whisky King, a non-fiction account of Canada’s mobster Rocco Perri.
Cole lives in Hamilton, Ontario. His archives are held by the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:25 (CET).