Canadian literature is written in several languages including English, French, and to some degree various Indigenous languages. It is often divided into French- and English-language literatures, which are rooted in the literary traditions of France and Britain, respectively. The earliest Canadian narratives were of travel and exploration.
Anne Patricia Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French, and an increasingly prominent body of work in both other European and Indigenous languages.
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography (2001), Layton fought Puritanism throughout his life:
Layton's work had provided the bolt of lightning that was needed to split open the thin skin of conservatism and complacency in the poetry scene of the preceding century, allowing modern poetry to expose previously unseen richness and depth.
Stephanie Bolster is a Canadian poet and professor of creative writing at Concordia University, Montreal.
Francis Reginald Scott (1899–1985), commonly known as Frank Scott or F. R. Scott, was a lawyer, Canadian poet, intellectual, and constitutional scholar. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party. He won Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's Award, twice, once for poetry and once for non-fiction. He was married to artist Marian Dale Scott.
Beautiful Losers is the second and final novel by Canadian writer and musician Leonard Cohen. It was published in 1966, before he began his career as a singer-songwriter.
Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist. He also writes under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe.
Louis Dudek, was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books. In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic, teacher and theoretician, Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities".
J. M. Cohen was a prolific British translator of European literature into English.
Arthur James Marshall Smith was a Canadian poet and anthologist. He "was a prominent member of a group of Montreal poets" – the Montreal Group, which included Leon Edel, Leo Kennedy, A. M. Klein, and F. R. Scott — "who distinguished themselves by their modernism in a culture still rigidly rooted in Victorianism."
Abraham Moses Klein was a Canadian poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer and lawyer. He has been called "one of Canada's greatest poets and a leading figure in Jewish-Canadian culture."
Book of Longing was the first new poetry book by Leonard Cohen since 1984's Book of Mercy. First published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart, Book of Longing contains 167 previously unpublished poems and drawings, mostly written at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy in California, where Cohen lived from 1994 to 1999, and in India, which he visited regularly during the late 1990s. The book also incorporates a number of poems written after his 1978 book, Death of a Lady's Man. These presumably were left out of his 1984 Book of Mercy, which contained only psalm-like meditations. Book of Longing also collects some of the lyrics to songs from the albums Ten New Songs (2001) and Dear Heather (2004). Many of these poems were first published at The Blackening Pages of The Leonard Cohen Files website.
Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.
John Jordan was an Irish poet and short-story writer.
Mark Abley is a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and nonfiction writer. His poetry and some of his nonfiction books express his interest in endangered languages. In November 2022 Abley was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Saskatchewan for his writing career and for his services to Canadian literature.
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, he received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize. In 2023, Rolling Stone named Cohen the 103rd-greatest singer.
Ann Diamond is a Canadian poet, short story writer, and novelist.
Johanna Shively Skibsrud is a Canadian writer, whose debut novel The Sentimentalists won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Broadview Press is an independent academic publisher that focuses on the humanities. Founded in 1985 by Don LePan, the company now employs over 30 people, has over 800 titles in print, and publishes approximately 35 titles each year. Broadview's offices are located across Canada in Calgary, Peterborough, Nanaimo, Guelph and Wolfville.
