Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, and Indigenous languages. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both geographically and historically, representing Canada's diversity in culture and region.
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".
Nicole Brossard is a French-Canadian formalist poet and novelist. Her work is known for exploration of feminist themes and for challenging masculine-oriented language and points of view in French literature.
Erín Moure Erín Moure is a Canadian poet and translator with 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, a volume of essays, a book of articles on translation, a poetics, and two memoirs; she has translated or co-translated 21 books of poetry and two of biopoetics from French, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, and Ukrainian, by poets such as Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Chantal Neveu, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato, Uxío Novoneyra, Lupe Gómez, Fernando Pessoa, and Yuri Izdryk. Three of her own books have appeared in translation, one each in German, Galician, and French. Her work has received the Governor General’s Award twice, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A. M. Klein Prize twice, and has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize and three-time finalist in the USA for a Best Translated Book Award (Poetry). Her latest is The Elements (2019) and Theophylline: an a-poretic migration will appear in 2023. Her work is rooted in a philosophical mix that accepts mystery, not always immediately accessible, and she has won several prizes, including the Governor General's Award twice.
Marian Ruth Engel was a Canadian novelist and a founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada. Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear (1976), a tale of erotic love between an archivist and a bear.
Susan (Sue) Goyette is a Canadian poet and novelist.
Robert Majzels is a Canadian novelist, poet, playwright and translator.
Mary Melfi is a Canadian writer of Italian descent. She is a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright.
Sina Queyras is a Canadian writer. To date, they have published seven collections of poetry, a novel and an essay collection.
Antonio D'Alfonso is a Canadian writer, editor, publisher, and filmmaker, best known as the founder of Guernica Editions.
Katia Grubisic is a Canadian writer, editor and translator.
Sandy Pool is a Canadian poet, editor and professor of creative writing. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections and a chapbook published by Vallum Editions. Her first collection, Exploding Into Night was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English language poetry at the 2010 Governor General's Awards.
Caterina Edwards LoVerso is a Canadian writer and teacher. Edwards was born in Earls Barton, England. Her mother was born in Lussino, Istria, and her father is from a Welsh and English family. Edwards eventually moved to Calgary and later attended the University of Alberta in Edmonton where she earned a B.A. in English. She then went on to complete a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. After attending the University of Alberta, Caterina Edwards married an American student of Sicilian origin, and they later settled in Edmonton to start a family. Shortly after this time, Edwards' published short stories in literary journals, and anthologies, which has continued to this day.
Joseph Pivato is a Canadian writer and academic who first established the critical recognition of Italian-Canadian literature and changed perceptions of Canadian writing. From 1977 to 2015 he was professor of Comparative Literature at Athabasca University, Canada. He is now Professor Emeritus.
Sandra Djwa is a Canadian writer, critic and cultural biographer. Originally from Newfoundland, she moved to British Columbia where she obtained her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1968. In 1999, she was honored to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture in honor of the department's 80th anniversary. She taught Canadian literature in the English department at Simon Fraser University from 1968 to 2005 when she retired as J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar, Humanities. She was part of a seventies movement to establish the study of Canadian literature and, in 1973, cofounded the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures (ACQL). She was Chair of the inaugural meeting of ACQL. She initiated textual studies of the poems of E. J. Pratt in the eighties, was editor of Poetry, "Letters in Canada" for the University of Toronto Quarterly (1980-4), and Chair of Canadian Heads and Chairs of English (1989).
José Acquelin is a Canadian poet from Quebec. He won the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry at the 2014 Governor General's Awards for Anarchie de la lumière, and was a nominee for the same award at the 1996 Governor General's Awards for L'Oiseau respirable.
Gail Scott is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator, best known for her work in experimental forms such as prose poetry and New Narrative. She was a major contributor to 1980s Québécoise feminist language theory, known as écriture au féminin, which explores the relationship between language, bodies, and feminist politics. Many of her novels and stories deal with fragmentation in time, in subjects, and in narrative structures.
Fernand Ouellette is a Quebecois writer. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Awards, having won the Governor General's Award for French-language non-fiction at the 1970 Governor General's Awards for Les actes retrouvés, the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 1985 Governor General's Awards for Lucie ou un midi en novembre, and the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry at the 1987 Governor General's Awards for Les Heures.
The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers is a Canadian organization established in 1986 to promote the publications of Italian-Canadian authors.
Pasquale Verdicchio is an Italian Canadian poet, critic and translator teaching in the US at UCSD. Born in Naples, Italy, he moved to Vancouver BC in the late 60s. He received his BA from University of Victoria, MA from the University of Alberta, and PhD from the University of California. In the departments of Italian and Comparative Literature, he teaches Italian language, film and literature, and creative writing.
Clarke, George Elliott. "Let Us Compare Anthologies: Harmonizing the Founding African-Canadian and Italian-Canadian Literary Collections." Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Hutcheon, Linda. "The Canadian Mosaic: A Melting Pot on Ice: The Ironies of Ethnicity and Race." Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Pivato, Joseph. "Twenty Years of Change: The Paradox of AICW." Strange Peregrinations. eds. Delia De Santis, Venera Fazio, Anna Foschi Ciampolini. Toronto: Centre for Italian-Canadian Studies, University of Toronto, 2007.
Sugars, Cynthia C. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. New York: Oxford U. P. 2016. 5-6.
Verduyn, Christl. ed. Literary Pluralities. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1998. 57, 290.
Wilke, Gundale. "Triculural Landscape." (Pillars of Lace) Canadian Literature 178 (Autumn 2003) 164-66.
