Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Prix Médicis étranger. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada, recognizing him as one of Canada's most renowned living authors.
Milton James Rhode Acorn, nicknamed The People's Poet by his peers, was a Canadian poet, writer, and playwright.
Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was Toronto's third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012. She was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2017 and has won the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Trillium Prize for Literature, the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry, the Harbourfront Writers' Prize, and the Toronto Book Award.
George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions, its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".
Sheree Fitch is a Canadian author and literacy advocate. Known primarily for her children's books, she has also published poetry and fiction for adults.
Susan McMaster is a Canadian poet, literary editor, performance poet, and former president of the League of Canadian Poets (2011–12).
Patricia Kathleen Page, was best known as a Canadian poet, though the citation as she was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada reads "poet, novelist, script writer, playwright, essayist, journalist, librettist, teacher and artist." She was the author of more than thirty published books that include poetry, fiction, travel diaries, essays, children's books, and an autobiography.
Richard Stevenson is a Canadian college English teacher and poet. Stevenson teaches English at Lethbridge College in Lethbridge, Alberta and has taught in Western Canada and Nigeria. Stevenson has degrees in English and Creative Writing from The University of Victoria and University of British Columbia. Stevenson is also a musician with the young adult group Sasquatch and the jazz/poetry ensemble Naked Ear.
Gwendolyn Margaret MacEwen was a Canadian poet and novelist. A "sophisticated, wide-ranging and thoughtful writer," she published more than 20 books in her life. "A sense of magic and mystery from her own interests in the Gnostics, Ancient Egypt and magic itself, and from her wonderment at life and death, makes her writing unique.... She's still regarded by most as one of the best Canadian poets."
Phyllis Webb was a Canadian poet and broadcaster.
Alfred Wellington Purdy was a 20th-century Canadian free verse poet. Purdy's writing career spanned fifty-six years. His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence, in addition to his posthumous works. He has been called the nation's "unofficial poet laureate" and "a national poet in a way that you only find occasionally in the life of a culture."
Priscila Uppal was a Canadian poet, novelist, fiction writer, and playwright.
James Crerar Reaney, was a Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol." Reaney won Canada's highest literary award, the Governor General's Award, three times and received the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama for both his poetry and his drama.
Isabella Valancy Crawford was an Irish-born Canadian writer and poet. She was one of the first Canadians to make a living as a freelance writer.
Anne Simpson is a Canadian poet, novelist, artist and essayist. She was a recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Millicent Travis Lane is an American-born Canadian poet based in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Patricia Monaghan was a poet, a writer, a spiritual activist, and an influential figure in the contemporary women's spirituality movement. Monaghan wrote over 20 books on a range of topics including Goddess spirituality, earth spirituality, Celtic mythology, the landscape of Ireland, and techniques of meditation. In 1979, she published the first encyclopedia of female divinities, a book which has remained steadily in print since then and was republished in 2009 in a two volume set as The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines. She was a mentor to many scholars and writers including biologist Cristina Eisenberg, poet Annie Finch, theologian Charlene Spretnak, and anthropologist Dawn Work-MaKinne, and was the founding member of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, which brought together artists, scholars, and researchers of women-centered mythology and Goddess spirituality for the first time in a national academic organization.
Alice Major is a Canadian poet, writer, and essayist, who served as poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta. During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Edmonton Poetry Festival Society as President.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Diana M. Vogel (1926–2013), known professionally as D. H. Melhem, was an American poet, novelist, and editor.
