Will Aitken

Will Aitken
Born	Terre Haute, Indiana
Occupation	Film critic, novelist
Language	English
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	McGill University
Notable works	Terre Haute (1989)

Will Aitken is an American-Canadian novelist, journalist and film critic. ^{[1] [2]} Originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, he has been based in Montreal, Quebec since moving to that city to attend McGill University in 1972.

In Montreal, he was a cofounder of the city's first LGBT bookstore, Librairie L'Androgyne, in 1973. ^[1] He has also worked as an arts journalist and film critic for a variety of media outlets, ^[3] including the CBC, the BBC, NPR, The Globe and Mail , Maclean's , The Paris Review , Christopher Street and the National Post .

He published his first novel, Terre Haute , in 1989. ^[4] He has since published three other novels. ^[3]

He taught film studies at Dawson College in Montreal. ^[1] In 2011, he published Death in Venice: A Queer Film Classic, a critical analysis of Luchino Visconti's 1971 film Death in Venice , as part of Arsenal Pulp Press's Queer Film Classics series. ^[1]

His 2018 book, Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo Van Hove and the Art of Resistance, was published by University of Regina Press. The book was a finalist for the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. ^[5]

Works

Novels

• Terre Haute . 1989, ISBN   978-0385298728.
• A Visit Home. 1993, ISBN   978-0671747077.
• Realia. 2000, ISBN   978-0679310402.
• The Swells. 2021, ISBN   978-1487009694.

Non-fiction

• Death in Venice: A Queer Film Classic. 2011, ISBN   978-1551524184.
• Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo Van Hove, and the Art of Resistance. 2018, ISBN   978-0889775213.

Anthologies

• Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism (ed. Peter Dubé). 2008.

References

1. Richard Burnett, "Montreal author Will Aitken revives Death in Venice" Archived 2012-06-15 at the Wayback Machine . Xtra! , January 26, 2012.
2. W. H. New, Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2002. ISBN   0802007619. Chapter "Gay and Lesbian Writing", pp. 418-422.
3. "Aitken goes big on Japan". Eye Weekly , September 21, 2000.
4. Gregory Woods, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition. Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN   9780300080889.
5. "Writers' Trust short lists reveal familiar faces". The Globe and Mail , September 26, 2018.