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Matthew Cohen was a Canadian writer, who published both mainstream literature under his own name and children's literature under the pseudonym Teddy Jam.
Cohen was born in Kingston, Ontario, the son of Morris Cohen and Beatrice Sohn, and grew up in Ottawa. He studied political economy at the University of Toronto, and taught political philosophy and religion at McMaster University in the late 1960s before publishing his first novel, Korsoniloff, in 1969.
His greatest popular success as a writer was his final novel, Elizabeth and After, which won the 1999 Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction only a few weeks before his death. He had been nominated twice previously, but had not won, in 1979 for The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone and in 1997 for Last Seen.
A founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada, he served on the executive board for many years and as president in 1986. During his presidency the Writer's Union was finally able to persuade the government of Canada to form a commission and establish a Public Lending Right program. He also served on the Toronto Arts Council as chair of the Literary Division and was able to obtain increased funding for writers. In recognition of this work he was awarded a Toronto Arts Award and the Harbourfront Prize.
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