Andrew Unger (born November 8, 1979) is a Canadian writer from

Steinbach, Manitoba Steinbach () ( Plautdietsch: /ˈʃte̞nbah/ or /ˈʃte̞nbax/) is a city located about south-east of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Steinbach is the third-largest city in Manitoba, with a population of 17,806, and the largest community in the Eas ...

, best known as the author and founder of the

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

website

The Daily Bonnet ''The Daily Bonnet'' is a satirical Mennonite website. It was created by Andrew Unger and launched in May 2016. It features news stories and editorials, with the structure of conventional newspapers, but whose content is contorted to make humoro ...

(along with the collection ''The Best of the Bonnet'') and for the novel ''Once Removed''.

Career

Before starting the Daily Bonnet, Unger was a contributor to numerous non-fiction publications including '' Geez'', '' CBC.ca'', and ''

Ballast Ballast is material that is used to provide stability to a vehicle or structure. Ballast, other than cargo, may be placed in a vehicle, often a ship or the gondola of a balloon or airship, to provide stability. A compartment within a boat, ship, ...

'', sometimes publishing under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

Andrew J. Bergman. Early in his career, he also wrote and published fiction and poetry, as well as working as a

ghostwriter A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...

for

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

-based Kevin Anderson & Associates. In 2016 Unger founded the Daily Bonnet and, along with his wife Erin Koop Unger, the non-satirical website Mennotoba in 2017. Since 2016, Unger has written more than two thousand Daily Bonnet articles. The website has been visited millions of times each year and has been cited in debate in the

Manitoba Legislature The Legislature of Manitoba is the legislature of the province of Manitoba, Canada. Today, the legislature is made of two elements: the King of Canada in Right of Manitoba, represented by the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, and the unicameral ...

and used as an example of Mennonite

humour Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...

in the Canadian

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

. In 2020 Unger's novel ''Once Removed'' was released by

Turnstone Press Turnstone Press is a Canadian literary publisher founded in 1976 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the oldest in Manitoba and among the most respected independent publishers in Canada. Turnstone was founded in 1976 by academics David Arnason, John Beaver, D ...

. The novel, which tells the story of a struggling writer trying to preserve his town's fading history, won the 2021 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book and was a finalist for the 2020

Margaret McWilliams Award The Margaret McWilliams Awards are an annual literary award in Manitoba, Canada presented by the Manitoba Historical Society. The society awards prizes in the categories of Scholarly History Book, Popular History Book, and Local History Book. Inaugu ...

. In late 2021, Unger released a collection of Daily Bonnet articles called ''The Best of the Bonnet'', also published by Turnstone Press. Unger cites

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...

Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...

Armin Wiebe Armin Wiebe (born 17 June 1948) is a Canadian writer of Russian Mennonite descent born in Altona, Manitoba, best known for his humorous novels about Mennonites. Wiebe is regarded as one of the pioneers of humorous Mennonite writing in English a ...

Billy Wilder Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Holl ...

, and

Miriam Toews Miriam Toews (; born 1964) is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including ''A Complicated Kindness'' (2004), '' All My Puny Sorrows'' (2014), and '' Women Talking'' (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor ...

among his writing influences. His work has been described as

Horatian Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

satire by scholar Nathan Dueck and compared to Armin Wiebe and

Arnold Dyck Arnold (Abram Bernhard) Dyck (January 19, 1889 – July 10, 1970) was a Russian Mennonite writer born in Hochfeld, Ukraine. He immigrated to Canada in 1923, residing in Steinbach, Manitoba, where he purchased and edited the ''Steinbach Post''. He is ...

by scholar Robert Zacharias.

Personal

The son of a

minister father and book-keeper mother, Unger was born in Winnipeg in 1979 and lived in Steinbach,

Brandon Brandon may refer to: Names and people *Brandon (given name), a male given name * Brandon (surname), a surname with several different origins Places Australia *Brandon, a farm and 19th century homestead in Seaham, New South Wales *Brandon, Q ...

and

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

as a child before returning to Steinbach as an adult. From his father's side, he is a direct descendant of

Kleine Gemeinde Kleine Gemeinde is a Mennonite denomination founded in 1812 by Klaas Reimer in the Russian Empire. The current group primarily consists of Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in Belize, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as a small presence in Canada ...

founder

Klaas Reimer Klaas Reimer (1770–1837) was the founder of the Kleine Gemeinde, a Mennonite denomination that still exists in Latin America, but underwent radical changes in Canada where it is now called the Evangelical Mennonite Conference. Ethnic Mennonite rem ...

, while his maternal grandfather fled to Canada from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

as a refugee in the 1920s. As a child he turned to satire, drawing

political cartoons A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine ...

, particularly of Canadian Prime Minister

Brian Mulroney Martin Brian Mulroney ( ; born March 20, 1939) is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Born in the eastern Quebec city of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney studied political sci ...

. Unger attended Providence University College in the late 1990s and holds degrees from the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.Steinbach Regional Secondary School Steinbach Regional Secondary School is a large public high school located in Steinbach, Manitoba, the second largest high school in the province with over 1900 students. The school was built in 1972 and was opened by then premier, Ed Schreyer on ...

since 2005. Unger is married to Erin Koop Unger, author of Mennotoba. In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Unger successfully advocated for the Manitoba government to create vaccine stickers in the

Russian Mennonite The Russian Mennonites (german: Russlandmennoniten it. "Russia Mennonites", i.e., Mennonites of or from the Russian Empire occasionally Ukrainian Mennonites) are a group of Mennonites who are descendants of Dutch Anabaptists who settled for abo ...

dialect of Plautdietsch.

References

External links

*
Daily Bonnet site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Unger, Andrew 1979 births Canadian humorists Canadian male novelists Canadian Mennonites Canadian satirists Living people Mennonite writers Mennonite humorists Writers from Winnipeg Writers from Calgary Writers from Steinbach, Manitoba Writers from Brandon, Manitoba University of Manitoba alumni 21st-century Canadian novelists