Graeme Gibson

Graeme Gibson
Born Graeme C. Gibson
(1934-08-09) 9 August 1934
London, Ontario, Canada
Occupation Novelist
Nationality Canadian
Genre Novel, non-fiction
Notable works Eleven Canadian Novelists
Spouse Shirley Gibson (div. c. 1973)
Partner Margaret Atwood
Children 3

Graeme C. Gibson, CM (born 9 August 1934) is a Canadian novelist.[1] He is a Member of the Order of Canada (1992) and was one of the organizers of the Writer's Union of Canada (chair, 1974–75). He is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.[1] He had two sons, Matt and Grae, with publisher Shirley Gibson.[2][3]

Gibson has a long-term relationship with novelist and poet Margaret Atwood which began in 1973.[1] They moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, where their daughter Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson was born in 1976. The family returned to Toronto in 1980.[4]

He is best known for his 1973 book Eleven Canadian Novelists, a non-fiction work in which he conducted extended interviews about literature and writing with Atwood, Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, Marian Engel, Timothy Findley, Dave Godfrey, Margaret Laurence, Jack Ludwig, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler and Scott Symons.

In 1996 he decided to stop writing novels. At the time he was working on a novel titled Moral Disorder. Atwood borrowed the title for her collection of short stories published in 2006.[5] He is a former council member of World Wildlife Fund Canada and is chairman of Pelee Island Bird Observatory.

He was awarded, jointly with Jacob Verhoef and Margaret Atwood, the 2015 Gold Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.[6]

The New Yorker magazine reported in its April 17, 2017 edition that Gibson has been diagnosed with early signs of dementia.

Bibliography

  • Five Legs – 1969
  • Communion – 1971
  • Eleven Canadian Novelists – 1973
  • Perpetual Motion – 1982
  • Gentleman Death – 1993
  • The Bedside Book of Birds – 2005
  • The Bedside Book of Beasts – 2009

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Graeme Gibson's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  2. ↑ Potts, Robert (2003-04-26). "Light in the wilderness". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  3. ↑ "The elusive Margaret Atwood | Quill and Quire". Quill and Quire. 2004-04-28. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  4. ↑ Sutherland, John (2012). Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives. Yale University Press. p. 721. ISBN 978-0-300-18243-9.
  5. ↑ See the Acknowledgements at the end of Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder, McClelland and Stewart, 2006.
  6. ↑ "Gold Medal 2015 Recipients - Dr. Jacob Verhoef, Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood". Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Retrieved 21 November 2015.
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