Roy MacSkimming

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Roy MacSkimming
Roy MacSkimming Web.jpg
Born Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupation Novelist
Nationality Canadian

Roy MacSkimming is a Canadian novelist, non-fiction writer and cultural policy consultant.

A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as an avocation. Most novelists struggle to get their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.

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Born in Ottawa, Ontario and educated at the University of Toronto, MacSkimming broke into book publishing in 1964 at Clarke, Irwin and later co-founded New Press, one of Canada’s leading small presses of the 1970s. He has been books editor and literary columnist at The Toronto Star , and has contributed to a number of newspapers and periodicals, including The Globe and Mail , The Ottawa Citizen , Maclean's and Saturday Night . MacSkimming has served as publishing officer with the Canada Council for the Arts, and policy director of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

Ottawa Federal capital city in Ontario, Canada

Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It stands on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of southern Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec; the two form the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2016, Ottawa had a city population of 964,743 and a metropolitan population of 1,323,783 making it the fourth-largest city and the fifth-largest CMA in Canada.

Ontario Province of Canada

Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.

University of Toronto university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution. As a collegiate university, it comprises eleven colleges, which differ in character and history, each with substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs. It has two satellite campuses in Scarborough and Mississauga.

MacSkimming has written two novels with European settings: Formentera (1972), set in the Balearic Islands, and Out of Love (1993), set in Athens and Crete. He has also written Gordie: A Hockey Legend (1994), an unauthorized biography of Gordie Howe; and Cold War (1996), a reassessment of the 1972 Canada-Soviet hockey series.

Balearic Islands Archipelago in the Mediterranean, autonomous community, and province of Spain

The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

Athens Capital and largest city of Greece

Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence starting somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennium BC.

Crete The largest and most populous of the Greek islands

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete and a number of surrounding islands and islets constitute the region of Crete, one of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece. The capital and the largest city is Heraklion. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065.

MacSkimming draws on his professional lifetime in and around the publishing industry in The Perilous Trade: Publishing Canada's Writers (2003). [1] The title was nominated for the National Business Book Award, and was a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year. It was reissued by McClelland & Stewart in an updated paperback edition in 2007.

MacSkimming's third novel, Macdonald, based on the final days of Canada’s founding prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, was published in 2007. [2] His most recent novel is Laurier in Love (2010), based on the tangled love life of Canadian prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

John A. Macdonald 1st Prime Minister of Canada

Sir John Alexander Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career which spanned almost half a century.

Wilfrid Laurier 7th prime minister of Canada

Sir Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier was the seventh prime minister of Canada, in office from 11 July 1896 to 6 October 1911.

MacSkimming lives near Perth, Ontario.

Bibliography

Fiction

Poetry

  • Shoot Low, Sheriff, They're Riding Shetland Ponies (with William Hawkins). Independent, 1964 [3]
William Hawkins (songwriter and poet) Canadian songwriter, poet, musician and journalist

William Alfred Hawkins was a Canadian songwriter, poet, musician and journalist, most notable for his contributions in the 1960s to Canadian folk rock music and to Canadian poetry. His best known song is "Gnostic Serenade", originally recorded by 3's a Crowd.

Novels

  • Formentera. Toronto: New Press, 1972
  • Out of Love. Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant Books, 1993
  • Macdonald. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2007
  • Laurier in Love. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2010

Non-Fiction

Awards

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References

  1. ↑ Medley, Mark (2010) "Picturing Canada", National Post , May 27, 2010, retrieved 2010-10-31
  2. ↑ "Required Reading", Ottawa Citizen , September 30, 2007, retrieved 2010-10-31
  3. ↑ A 56-page self-stapled paperback. See "poetry and words" at www.wmhawkins.com.
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