(HarperCollins 2002 pb)
Born in Nipawin, SK, Sharon (Annette) Butala (1940-) has taught English in SK, BC, and Halifax. A literary conservationist, she moved to a ranch near Eastend and created the Wallace Stegner House Residence for Artists (his childhood home) and helped create the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area. She has also written several books of meditative, reflective non-fiction and now lives in Calgary.
(rare signed, translation: Merloyd Lawrence; Jonathan Cape, 1960 dj)
Born in Quebec City, poet-novelist Marie-Claire Blais (1939-2021) was published at a young age; the book above came out when she was just 20. She has over 20 novels under her belt, and, with her female partner, splits her time living in both the Eastern Townships, Quebec and Key West, Florida. She won the GG Award in 1996 and 2 Guggenheim Fellowships.
(rare signed by 7 authors; Totem, 1987 pb; design: Dragon’s Eye Press)
(signed 1969 McClelland & Stewart dj; design: Charles Pachter)
(left: 1989 Doubleday dj; cover: Fred Marcellino; right: laid-in signed letter reply, 2005, & promo bookmark)
(1990 MGM DVD; movie version of The Handmaid’s Tale)
(left: signed 1992 Coach House; illustration–Atwood, design: Stephanie Power, Reactor; right: signed 2002 Cambridge U dj; painting: “Mortality Cubes”, 1997 by Marianna Gartner)
(1967 House of Anansi pb; design & photo; Charles Pachter)
(double-signed Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1997 dj)
(Harper & Row, 1971 dj; jacket: William Kimber)
(left: 1990 Oxford U Press pb; photo: Deborah Samuel; design: Marie Bartholomew; centre: 2007 Houghton Mifflin, U.S. dj with CD; photo: Atwood; design: C.S. Richardson; right: 1977 HarperCollins cassette; photo: Laurence Acland; design: Margo Barooshian)
Margaret (Eleanor) Atwood (1939-) is arguably, along with Alice Munro, one of our best-known fiction writers internationally. She has written 17 novels and 20 volumes of poetry and has become our most obvious prolific and successful modern writer. Born in Ottawa, she spent her early life in Northern ON and PQ, growing up in a bush lifestyle which definitely ‘marked’ her imagination and sensibility.
As a youth and young woman, she also worked as a cashier, waitress, and summer camp counsellor, and began her writing career at U of T studying with Northrop Frye and writing, with friend Dennis Lee, for Acta Victoriana. Her acclaimed works include The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Alias Grace (1996), The Penelopiad (2005), and Oryx and Crake (2003–a GG winner for fiction). Always an experimental individual, she invented the Long Pen solution to deal with book tour demands of interminable book signings.
Personally, I’ve always found her poetry to be more intriguing going back to the first book of hers my wife and I bought at U of A in the ’60s just after she had taught there–The Circle Game–the 1966 GG winner for poetry. Recursively, she has published volumes of poetry between her novels, which I think tells you something about where her writing heart may be genre-wise. In 2002, when I was selecting one Canadian poet to feature in depth for Inside Poetry, 2nd ed. (Harcourt), I chose her and several of her poems. (If you’re curious, Margaret Avison was my 2nd choice; only she had a sufficiently major comparable quality canon to choose from.)
(signed McClelland & Stewart dj)
(2001 special ed. Key Porter dj; cover & illustrations: Frank Newfeld)
(rare 1978 Caedmon LP; cover: Frank Newfeld)
Dennis (Beynon) Lee (1939-) is probably the best known author poetry for children in Canada. A founder as well of the House of Anansi, he is also a teacher, editor, and critic. His adult poetry collection, Civil Elegies won the Governor General Award for poetry in 1972. After that, in 1974, he wrote his classic Alligator Pie (with acclaimed illustrator Frank Newfeld–featured earlier in this blog). His Nicholas Knock and Garbage Delight proved to be successful follow-ups in this rhymey vein. Lee also wrote the theme for a popular children’s tv series Fraggle Rock.
(left: David R. Godine, 1982 U.S. ed.; right: sealed cassettes; illustration: Rita Grasso, design: Joy Chu; 2000 Goose Lane/CBC)
Born in Vancouver, Joy (Nozomi) Kogawa (1936-) was interned and persecuted like many other Japanese-Canadians in WWII. She has been a poet, school teacher, and writer for the PM’s office (1974). She now divides her time between Vancouver and Toronto. Kogawa was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2006 and was given the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government in 2010. Her childhood home is in the process of being saved by the Land Conservancy of BC. Kogawa’s best book remains Obasan (1981).
(scarce signed 1997 Anansi pb)
Roch Carrier (1937-) is the author of the iconic short story “The Hockey Sweater” which is as famous and iconic as Stompin’ Tom Connor’s “Hockey Song.” It was so culturally basic that a line from it was illustrated on the old $5 Canadian bills. Carrier himself was born in Sainte-Justine, PQ, and is one of the best-known PQ writers in English Canada. In his youth, he studied at the Sorbonne and eventually became head of the Canada Council from 1994-1997.
(signed 1983 reprint McClelland & Stewart pb; photo: Nova Scotia Bureau of Information)
(2004 McClelland & Stewart/Douglas Gibson dj; illustrations: Peter Rankin)
Born in North Battleford, SK, Alistair MacLeod (1936-2014) is considered to be Cape Breton Island’s best and most famous writer. He certainly considered that place to be his emotional and spiritual homeland through his Scottish family heritage. His No Great Mischief, was voted Atlantic Canada’s greatest book–something which Rex Murphy concurs with, but he, like me, prefers Macleod’s masterful, artistic short stories featured in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). MacLeod became a respected fixture at U of Windsor teaching creative writing there for more than 3 decades.
(signed 1968 McClelland & Stewart dj; design: William Fox; GG winner for poetry)
Penticton, BC-born and Oliver, BC-raised George (Harry) Bowering (1935- ) was an aerial photographer for the Royal Canadian Air Force. He later taught in Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver, before becoming a poet, novelist, historian, and biographer. Author of over 100 books, Bowering also served as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2002). He lives in Vancouver and taught at Simon Fraser U for 30 years.
(left: signed 1973 Oberon pb; cover: Alfred Pellam; design: Michael Macklem; right: signed 1975 Oberon pb; design: Michael Macklem)
Winnipeg-born W.(illiam) D. (empsey) Valgardson (1936-) was raised in the Gimli, MB area and has written about ordinary life in the Interlake region of Manitoba. He was a long-time professor at the U of Victoria and his stories have been filmed (e.g., “God Is Not a Fish Inspector” and performed on CBC Radio. His novels include Gentle Sinners (1980) and The Girl with the Botticelli Face (1992). I selected his well-crafted story “Identities” to stimulate critical questioning techniques for senior high school students in Inside Stories III (Harcourt).
(2004 4th Estate/HarperCollins dj; jacket photo: Susan Rosenthal/Corbis)
(left: signed Vintage Books/Random House, 1993 pb; design: Concrete Design Communications; photos: David Purdie; right: scarce Connie Booth (Fawlty Towers) reading, 1995 Reed Audio cassettes; cover photo: David Purdie, design: Andrea Pinnington)
(left: signed 1997 Random House dj; design: Jonathan Howells, photos: Vivian Gast; right: rare Penguin Audio, 1997 cassettes read by author; design: Martin Ogolter, photo: Macduff Everton Swanstock)
(left: 1987 Random House dj, photo: “Monique” by Barbara Cole, Mira Godard Gallery; design: Concrete Design Communications; right: 2004 Pathe DVD starring Miranda Richardson)
(signed ltd. ed. 1997 Harbourfront chapbook; design: Alan Siu)
Born in the Oak Park district of Chicago, Carol (Ann) Shields (1935-2003) moved to live, teach, and write in Winnipeg, MB. The Stone Diaries won the Governor General Award for fiction in 1993 and then the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. She also wrote The Republic of Love (1992), Swann (1987), and Larry’s Party (1997) as well as stories, collected together in the first book pictured above. A popular cultural figure locally, she was made the Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. I have long been impressed by her quirky stories and used “Invitations” and “Fragility” in a couple of my story anthologies.
