Carol Shields of Illinois & Manitoba won the Pulitzer & the Governor General's Award for these "diaries"
The setting is 
Tyndall, Manitoba: a dusty, landlocked Manitoba village ... About these ads... [DOC] [TLE] Carol Shields Biography -- Academy of Achievement: Print Preview [PAR] Apr 7, 2008 ... For the first time, Carol Shields began to see herself as something ... at the 
University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, deep in central Canada.