Shortly before his death in 1999, Matt Cohen won the Governor General's Award for his novel Elizabeth and After, and the Harbourfront Festival Prize in honour of his life as a writer. His previous novel, Last seen, was a finalist for both the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Award. In 1998, Cohen received the Toronto Arts Award for writing. He is the author of thirteen novels, as well as poetry, short stories, books for children and works of translation from the French into English. His collection of Stories, Getting Lucky, and his memoir, Typing: A Life in Twenty-Sex Keys, were published posthumously in 2000.

The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone, first published in 1979, is one of Matt Cohen's four novels that came to be known as the Salem quartet--stories set in the fictional town of Salem in eastern Ontario, somewhere north of Kingston in the rugged farmland and forest of the Canadian Shield. These are the novels that first brought Matt Cohen to national attention. The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone, a story about the pleasure of love that comes late in life, centres on the lives of two time-worn characters whose pursuit of happiness is strangely rewarded. With The Disinherited, another of the Salem novels, this is considered among the author's best works.