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A Celebration of Women Writers Canada List_of_Canadian_writers Writers

Editor: Jock
Edited: Dec. 2, 2008

Famous Canadian
Authors, Cartoonists, & Essayists.

Here are a few of the many Canadians authors, who either were born in Canada or became Canadian citizens, and who gained national and international fame for their writing. The links here are to their biographies.

Canadian Novelists and Essayists

• Margaret Atwood
  Born 18 November, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. So many of her books are outstanding it’s almost futile to the name the best. Currently The Blind Assassin stands out for special recognition.
• Austin Clarke
  Born in Barbados on July 26, 1934. Became a resident in Canada in 1955 and a Canadian citizen in 1985. Austin Clarke is the author of five short-story collections and ten novels. Won the 2003 Commonwealth Writer´s prize for The Polished Hoe.
• Douglas Coupland
  Born December 30, 1961 on a Canadian military base in Baden-Sollingen, Germany. Best known for first book, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991). Although the term had existed before, Coupland uses "Generation X" to describe the generation born in the late 1950s and the 1960s.
• Robertson Davies
  Born Aug. 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario. Died Dec 2, 1995. Best known for his novels, the Deptford trilogy.
• Mazo de la Roche
  Born 1885 in Toronto, Ontario. Her most popular novel, Jalna (1927).
• Timothy Findley
  Born in 1930 in the fashionable Rosedale district of Toronto, Ontario and died in 2002 in France. Wrote fiction and non-fiction, and plays. The Wars, for which he received the Governor General's Award for Fiction, may be his best work.
• Wayne Johnston
  Born in Goulds, Newfoundland in 1958. Best known for his epic novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
• Margaret Laurence
  Born in Neepawa, Manitoba on July 18, 1926. Died on January 5, 1987. Her novel The Diviner’s is one the best known of her many novels.
• Stephen Leacock
  Born on December 30, 1869, at Swanmore, Hampshire, England. The Leacock family emigrated to Canada in 1876 and settled on a 100-acre farm just a few miles south of Lake Simcoe near the village of Sutton, Ontario. His masterpiece is Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
  , published in 1912. It’s based on the town of Orillia, Ontario.
• Ann-Marie MacDonald
  Born 1958 in Germany into an air force family. She graduated from the National Theatre School in Montreal in 1980 and now lives in Toronto. Best known for her novel Fall on You Knees.
• Alistair MacLeod
  Born 1936 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Winner of the 2001 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for No Great Mischief.
• Yann Martel
  Born in Spain in 1963 of peripatetic Canadian parents. He grew up in Alaska, British Columbia, Costa Rica, France, Ontario and Mexico, and has continued travelling as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey and India. He won the Booker prize (2002) for Life of Pi.
• Anne Michaels
  Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1958. Best known as the author of Fugitive Pieces.
• Lucy Maud Montgomery
  Born November 30, 1874, in Clinton, Prince Edward Island. Lived in Cavendish. Her book Anne of Green Gables is a classic in English literature.
  
  
• Rohinton Mistry
  Born in Bombay in 1952, Rohinton Mistry immigrated to Canada in 1975. His novel A Fine Balance stands out as a masterpiece.
• W.O. Mitchell
  William Ormond was born on March 13, 1914, Weyburn, Saskatchewan. His novel Who Has Seen the Wind? is considered a classic of Canadian literature. He’s one of Canada’s national treasures, died Feb. 25, 1998.
• Farley Mowat
  Born in Belleville, Ontario on May 12, 1921. Never Cry Wolf is the most widely known of his many books.
• Michael Ondaatje
  Born in Sri Lanka on September 12, 1943. After coming to Canada in 1962, he received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen´s University in Kingston. He is best known for the screen adaptation of his novel, The English Patient.
• Mordecai Richler
  Born January 27, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec. By the time of his death at the age of 70, Richler had earned a global reputation as a novelist, also as a curmudgeonly misogynist.
• John Ralston Saul
  Born in Ottawa in 1947 and raised in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. He is best known for his international bestseller Voltaire’s Bastards.
• Nino Ricci
  Born in 1959 in Leamington, Ontario. Best known for the novel The Book of Saints.
• Carol Shields
  Born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1935. At age 22, she married Donald Hugh Shields and moved to Canada where she has lived ever since. She is best known for her novel The Stone Diaries.
• Jane Urquhart
  Born in 1949 in Little Long Lac, Ontario. Her novel Away is among her best to date.
• M.G. Vassanji
  Born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950 and raised in Tanzania. He immigrated to Canada, working at the Chalk River atomic power station. In 1980 Vassanji moved to Toronto. The Book of Secrets is one of his best novels.
• Guy Vanderhaeghe
  Born in 1951 and grew up in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan. Best known for his novel: The Englishman’s Boy.

Canadian Poets

• Earle Birney
  Born in 1904, at a bush farm north of Calgary, Alberta. Wrote essays, novels, and poems. Best known for his poem David. Died in 1995.
• George Bowering
  Born in Penticton, British Columbia, in 1935. He is the Canadian Parliament’s first poet laureate. His Life: A Poem is consider one of his best: a poetic memoir that spans and reconfigures thirty years of his life.
• Pauline Johnson
  First Native poet to have her work published in Canada.
• Émile Nelligan
  Born in Montreal on Christmas Eve, 1879 and died 1941. He’s an outstanding turn-of-the-century writer, and is French-Canada’s most beloved and admired poet. Among his best lines (in translation):Watch my soul bathe in memories, and weep.
• Robert W. Service
  Born in Preston, Lancashire, England of Scottish parents. He emigrated to Canada in 1894 and took a job with the Canadian Bank of Commerce and was stationed for eight years in Whitehorse, Yukon. [Webmaster’s favourite poet, a people’s poet.] Best know poem The Cremation of Sam McGee (For his poems see: PoemHunter.)

Canadian Cartoonists

• Lynn Johnston
  First woman to win the Reuben Award for the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year (1985) from the National Cartoonists Society. Lynn Johnston creator of the popular comic strip For Better or For Worse which appears in over 2,000 papers in the U.S., Canada, and 20 other countries. It is translated into eight languages.

Canadian Children's Stories Authors

• Robert Munsch
  Canada´s best selling author. Born on June 11, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Love You Forever is his best selling book. He currently lives in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Short-story Authors

• Alice Munro
  Born in Wingham, Ontario on 10 July 1931. She is a brilliant short-story. The Love of a Good Woman is one of her finest stories.
• Margaret Laurence
  Born in Neepawa, Manitoba on July 18, 1926. Died on January 5, 1987. In addition to her novels, she wrote numerous shorts stories: A Bird in the House.