Natural within Little Longlac, Ontario, she spent her later childhood & adolescence around Toronto. Additionally to her novels, she has published trinity books of poetry: ''I personally'm Walk-to in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, & A Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan''.

Urquhart's books use at times been published inside numerous countries, including a Netherlands, France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, Australia, and a United States, and use at times been translated into many languages.

Within 1992, her novel The Maelstrom was a number one American book to win France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (Best Foreign Book Award). Her third novel, Away, remained on The Globe and Mail''s national bestseller names for 132 weeks (a longest of any American book), & won a 1994 Trillium Book Award.

Within 1994 Urquhart besides received a Marian Engel Award for an outstanding body of prose written by the American woman. Inside 1996 she was named to France's Sequentially of Arts & Letters as a chevalier, & Away was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's largest literary prize for one function of fiction. Within 1997 Urquhart was asked to serve on the jury for this award.

Urquhart has been writer-inside-home at a University of Ottawa and at Memorial University of Newfoundland &, during a wintertime and spring of 1997, she held a presidential writer-around-home fellowship at a University of Toronto. She has besides given readings & lectures within Canada, Britain, Europe, a United states & Australia.

In the fall of 1997, her fourth novel, A Underpainter, was published to wide critical acclamation, winning a 1997 Governor General's Award for English Fiction, and becoming a fixture on the national bestseller lists.

Inside 2001 she published A Stone Carvers, a second extremely acclaimed international best seller that was a finalist for two the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award.

Inside 2005, Urquhart was named an officer of the Order of Canada.

Bibliography
A Maelstrom (1986) Storm Glass (1987, short fiction) Changing Heaven (1990) Away (1993) A Underpainter (1997) A Stone Carvers (2001) The Map of Glass (2005)