Robert Kroetsch: Essayist, Novelist, Poet brings together an international cast of critics, scholars, and writers to examine, re-examine, and honour the celebrated author’s immense significance in the twenty-first century, and what it means to be Canadian and part of the country’s literary landscape. Original essays by Dennis Cooley, Phil Hall, Nicole Markoti, Aritha van Herk, and Rudy Wiebe, among others.
The author of nine novels, thirteen books of poetry, and seven non-fiction volumes, Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) was a major figure in the development and history of literature in Canada. He won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction for The Studhorse Man (1969) and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for The Hornbooks of Rita K. (2001). He received honorary degrees from the University of Winnipeg (1983) and the University of Alberta (1997), and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (2004). Robert Kroetsch stands as a seminal figure in the Canadian literary landscape.
In his early fiction he introduced postmodern techniques into the mainstream of Canadian fiction. He then moved on to writing poetry while still writing fiction, and created a new vision for poets across the country, defining the nature of the poetic experience by searching out the roots of his place in the Canadian landscape.
Robert Kroetsch: Essayist, Novelist, Poet is a timely reminder of the immense significance that Kroetsch holds in the twenty-first-century understanding of what it means to be Canadian and part of the country’s literary landscape.
Published in English.

Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, David Staines specializes in medieval literature and culture and Canadian literature and culture. In the former, he has published Tennyson’s Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources, and translated The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes; in the latter, he published The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, The Forty-Ninth and Other Parallels: Contemporary Canadian Perspectives, and The Letters of Stephen Leacock. He has also edited volumes on Morley Callaghan, Stephen Leacock and Margaret Laurence, and co-edited volumes of the writings of Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. A long-time friend of Carol Shields, he wrote Carol Shields: Cultural Context, a part of Library and Archives Canada’s Web exhibition Canadian Writers.

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David Eso's work as scholar, poet, anthologist, and impresario unites Canadian literary heritage with its impending renaissance. Eso has appeared in Filling Station, CV2, Strangers in Paris, Canadian Literature, Arc, Freefall, Vallum, Under the Mulberry Tree, the Globe and Mail, and on CBC. His chapbooks include Entries from My Affair with an Escape Artist (2003), A Wide Path to the Narrowing Future (2010) and Asiarific (2014). As a familiar face at literary readings across Canada, Charles Noble calls Eso "a force of nature and force of culture." Eso is currently a graduate student at the University of Calgary where he is studying the letters of Robert Kroetsch.

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Albert Braz is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Alberta. He is the author of The False Traitor: Louis Riel in Canadian Culture (2003) and Apostate Englishman: Grey Owl the Writer and the Myths (2015) and the co-editor, with Paul D. Morris, of National Literature in Multinational States (2022).

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Cameron Anstee is the author of one previous collection of poetry, Book of Annotations, and the editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins. He is the editor and publisher of Apt. 9 Press and holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Ottawa. He lives and writes in Ottawa on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people.

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Dennis Cooley grew up in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and attended the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Rochester. He is an active member of the writing community in Winnipeg and teaches at St. John’s College, University of Manitoba. His latest book of poetry is the bentleys (2006).

Nicole Markotić is a poet and critic who teaches at the University of Windsor and edits the chapbook publication Wrinkle Press. She has published two poetry books, Connect the Dots and Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, as well as a fictional biography of Alexander Graham Bell, Yellow Pages. She is currently completing a novel.

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Nicole Markotic is a poet, novelist, and critic. Her poetry books include Bent At the Spine (BookThug), Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, and Connect the Dots (Wolsak & Wynn); her novels are Yellow Pages (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) and Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot (Arsenal Pulp Press). She has edited a collection of poetry by Dennis Cooley, By Word of Mouth, co-edited (with Sally Chivers) an anthology of essays concerning representations of disability, The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film, is working on a critical book on disability and literature (McFarland & Co), and has an edited collection of essays on Robert Kroetsch (forthcoming with Guernica). She has published in literary journals in Canada, the USA, Australia, and Europe (including The Capilano Review, CV2, filling Station, New American Writing, Open Letter, Prairie Fire, Rampike, and West Coast Line). She won the bpNichol Poetry Chapbook Award in 1998, and was nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Poetry Book of the Year Award and for the Henry Kreisel First Book of the Year Award. She edits the chapbook series, Wrinkle Press (publishing such poets as Robert Kroetsch, Nikki Reimer, and Fred Wah), and has worked as an editor for Red Deer Press and NeWest Press. Currently, Nicole Markotic is Professor of Creative Writing, Children’s Literature, and Disability Studies at the University of Windsor.

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Laurie Ricou is a Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is a former president of the Western Literature Association, and currently edits Canadian Literature. His previous publications include Vertical Man/Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction (0-7748-0023-2), A Field Guide to “A Guide to Dungeness Spit” (0-88982-165-8), and The Arbutus/Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest (1-896300-43-X). Ricou currently lives in Vancouver, BC.

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Aritha van Herk is a professor at the University of Calgary, where she teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative.

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Rudy Wiebe was born near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in 1934. From the University of Alberta, he received a B.A. 1956 and a M.A. in Creative Writing in 1960. He studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen in West Germany, and in 1962 he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Mennonite Brethren Bible College. In 1962ᆧ63 he was editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position which he resigned because of the controversy over his first novel,Peace Shall Destroy Many. From 1967 to 1992 he was Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta. Wiebe has published twenty-five books, including nine novels and the non-fiction best-sellerStolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, co-authored with Yvonne Johnson. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction forThe Temptations Of Big Bear in 1973, and again in 1994 forA Discovery Of Strangers. He is also the winner of the Lorne Pierce Gold Metal of the Royal Society of Canada for his contribution to Canadian literature ླ87). Wiebe has served as chairman of both the Writer’s Guild of Alberta and the Writers’ Union of Canada. He now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

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