Fertile grounds
Over the decades, certain milieus have served as unusually productive petri dishes for Canadian writing talent. Here, a decidedly non-exhaustive list of notable CanLit talent pools and some of their better-known alumni:
The Burning Rock Collective, St. John’s
– Michael Winter
– Lisa Moore
– Jessica Grant
– Ramona Dearing
– Claire Wilkshire
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
– Lynn Coady
– Hugh MacLennan
– Alistair MacLeod
– Linden MacIntyre
– Lesley Crewe
– Sheldon Currie
– Daniel MacIvor
Brunswick Avenue, Toronto
– Katherine Govier
– Marian and Howard Engel
– Sylvia Fraser
– Myrna Kostash
– Susan Swan
– Leon and Constance Rooke
– Matt Cohen
– Dennis Lee
UBC’s creative writing program
– Nancy Lee
– Zsuzsi Gartner
– Lee Henderson
– Kevin Chong
– Madeleine Thien
– Charlotte Gill
– Michael Christie
Vietnam War protest and/or evasion
– Philip Marchand
– Jack Todd
– Keith Maillard
– William Gibson
– Mark Frutkin
– Judith Merrill
Mile End, Montreal
– Mordecai Richler
– Sean Michaels
– Heather O’Neill
– Arjun Basu
– Rawi Hage
– Adam Leith Gollner
Mordecai Richler’s house
– Mordecai
– Daniel
– Noah
– Emma
– Jacob
These stories appeared in Q&Q’s 80th anniversary feature in the April 2015 print issue.