More on: writer

Rudy Wiebe was born in 1934 in Speedwell, a small Mennonite community in northern Saskatchewan. His parents had fled Russia in 1930 and became part of the last generation of homesteaders to settle the Canadian West. In 1947 Wiebe’s family moved to southern Alberta. Wiebe studied literature at the University of Alberta and the University…

The Voice of This Calling Art and Vocation FOUR days after I turned three, my sister was born. I was young enough to be confused and anxious about what was going on. My mother had grown large and then abruptly disappeared from our apartment, where I was left with a sitter. This all took place…

George Saunders is the author of four collections of short stories—Civilwarland in Bad Decline (1997), Pastoralia (2001), In Persuasion Nation (2007), and Tenth of December (2014)—as well as a book of essays, The Brain-Dead Megaphone (2007), and an award-winning children’s book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2005). Civilwarland in Bad Decline was a finalist…

Born in 1950 in Newcastle, New Brunswick, David Adams Richards is one of Canada’s most prolific and powerful writers. His first novel The Coming of Winter was published in 1974, followed by three more novels from Oberon, a small press in Ottawa. In 1988 his Nights below Station Street (McClelland and Stewart) won the prestigious…

Marilynne Robinson—unapologetic Calvinist, committed humanist, brilliant writer—is undoubtedly one of the most important contemporary American authors. Born and raised in northern Idaho, she was educated at Pembroke College (now part of Brown University), where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and at the University of Washington, where she received her MA and PhD in literature. She…