[1][2][3] His writing has won a PEN prize (PEN/Nob Hill),[4] represented Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as a nominee for the Best New American Voices anthology,[5] and received various other awards.
He attended Merivale High School in Ottawa, where he was captain of the rugby team, followed by McGill University, from which he graduated in 1994 with the Brian Coughlan prize for highest GPA in the economics department.
Boldizar's grandfather, Vojtech Zahorsky, was awarded the Kosice Prize (i.e., "keys to the city") for his contributions as a partisan during WWII and his service as the head of the Slovak Veteran's Association.
[12] Boldizar worked briefly as an attorney at the San Francisco and Prague offices of Baker & McKenzie, before leaving law in order to write.
His first novel is titled The Ugly,[13] about Muzhduk the Ugli the Fourth, a member of a lost tribe of boulder-throwing Slovaks living in the mountains of Siberia whose land is stolen by American lawyers.