Thursday, January 7, 2016

University of Alberta Writers-in-Residence interviews: 1975-2016



For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. Obviously some of the writers have passed (and a couple declined), and some were actually impossible to track down, but I still managed to convince most on the list to participate in short interviews on their time in Edmonton. Attempting as best as possible to post the interviews in order of their residencies, the interviews appear weekly from January 8, 2016. See the links to the individual interviews below. There was also a big event at the University of Alberta in March 2016, in which some twenty-plus former writers-in-residence were invited back (including myself) for a series of readings, panel discussions and workshops [see my report on such here].

Gary Geddes (1976-77); Maria Campbell (1979-80); Daphne Marlatt (1985-86); Ray Smith (1986-87); Leona Gom (1987-88); Fred Wah (1988-89); Kristjana Gunnars (1989-90); Sandra Birdsell (1991); Merna Summers (1991-1992); Trevor Ferguson (1992); Don McKay (1993-4); Di Brandt (1995-6); Ven Begamudré (1996-7); Caterina Edwards (1997-8); Tim Lilburn (1999-2000); Marilyn Dumont (2000-2001); Shani Mootoo (2001-2), Thomas Wharton (2002-3); Myrna Kostash (2003-4); Karen Solie (2004-5); Curtis Gillespie (2005-6); Lynn Coady (2008-9); Tim Bowling (2010-11); Richard Van Camp (2011-12); Marina Endicott (2012-3); Erin Moure (2013-4); Minister Faust (2014-5);