Alistair MacLeod

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Cover of Island (2001).

Alistair MacLeod born 1936 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan is a noted Canadian author and Professor of English at the University of Windsor. His works are considered among the very best Canada has produced in the twentieth century. MacLeod's writing career has been quite remarkable in earning him a great critical reputation on the basis of only two collections of short stories and one novel.

1 Academic career
2 Literary career
3 Fiction Bibliography
4 External links

[edit] Academic career

When MacLeod was ten when his family moved to a farm in Inverness County on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. After completing high school, MacLeod attended teacher's college in Truro and then taught school. He studied at St. Francis Xavier University between 1957 and 1960 and graduated with a BA and B.Ed. He then went on to receive his MA in 1961 from the University of New Brunswick and his PhD in 1968 from the University of Notre Dame. A specialist in British literature of the nineteenth century, MacLeod taught English for three years at Indiana University before accepting a post in 1969 at the University of Windsor as professor of English and creative writing. During the summer, his family resides in Cape Breton, where he spends part of his time "writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island."

[edit] Literary career

MacLeod published fourteen short stories, collected in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986) before publishing his first novel in 1999. No Great Mischief follows the lives of several generations of a family that emigrates from Scotland to Cape Breton Island, the setting of many of MacLeod's short stories. Written over the course of thirteen years, No Great Mischief was published to great critical acclaim and has been translated into a number of different languages. Nominated for all of Canada's major literary awards, the novel was awarded the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction, the Trillium Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Award, the Dartmouth Book & Writing Award for Fiction, the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Choice Award, and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. All of his published short stories, plus one new piece, were collected in Island, published in 2000.

[edit] Fiction Bibliography

To Every Thing There Is a Season: A Cape Breton Christmas Story, McClelland & Stewart, 2004.
Island: The Collected Stories, Emblem Editions, 2001.
No Great Mischief, Random House of Canada, 1999.
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, New Canadian Library, 1976.
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, New Canadian Library, 1986.