Celebrated Canadian Novelist Serves as McGee Writing Professor
Douglas Glover, McGee Professor of Writing
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1/20/2005
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Canadian novelist Douglas Glover's childhood passion for writing fiction has led him to pursue a life-long career as an author, as well as a greater understanding of his craft. He's looking forward to sharing that understanding with Davidson students during the spring semester as the college's annual McGee Professor of Writing.
The McGee Professorship was established by John F. McGee ' 43 and his wife to bring gifted writers to campus as visiting professors. Associate professor of English Alan Michael Parker said that Glover's extensive knowledge and deep passion for writing made him an excellent choice. “Glover is a contemporary novelist who reads deeply into literary traditions,” said Parker. “He brings to teaching a thorough understanding of what is happening in contemporary fiction.”
Born in 1948, Glover grew up on his family's tobacco farm in southwestern Ontario. He studied philosophy at York University and the University of Edinburgh, and worked at several daily newspapers in Canada before earning his M.F.A. at the University of Iowa in 1982.
Glover loved writing fiction from an early age. Although he never completed it, he began writing his first novel, which concerned the Vietnam War, at age fifteen. At age nineteen, Glover wrote a short story entitled Hail, which offered a glimpse into life on Glover's family farm, and published it five years later. Though he has held other jobs throughout his life, Glover said, “I have always been writing fiction.”
His literary work to date includes five story collections, four novels, a book of essays entitled Notes Home from a Prodigal Son, and The Enamoured Knight, a book about Don Quixote and novel form. Many of his stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories, and The New Oxford Book of Canadian Stories. His criticism has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe Books, and The Los Angeles Times. Since 1996 he has served as editor of Best Canadian Short Stories.
For two years he also produced and hosted “The Book Show,” a weekly literary interview program which originated at WAMC in Albany and was syndicated on various public radio stations and around the world on Voice of America and the Armed Forces Network.
Glover said that his novels and short stories incorporate one or more of three themes: his main characters tend to be self-reflecting writers; his plots explore historical events; and, he portrays desire as a primal activator of life.
Glover is the recipient of the Governor General's Award in Fiction (Canada's Pulitzer) in 2003 for his novel, Elle, which tells the story of a French woman marooned on an island on the St. Lawrence River in 1542 during one of Jacques Cartier's colonization expeditions to the New World. That novel has also earned him a nomination for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 1990, Glover won a Canadian National Magazine Award for his short story, Story Carved in Stone. Glover has been recognized by his peers through publication of a collection of their essays entitled The Act of Desire.
Over the past twelve years, Glover has taught at Skidmore College, Colgate University, and the State University of New York at Albany. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Lethbridge, St. Thomas University, and Utah State University. He is currently Assistant Faculty Director at the Vermont College M.F.A. in Writing program.
Glover said that he loves to talk with students about writing and literature, and that he deeply values the one-on-one student-professor relationship. “Over time, I have learned a lot about teaching,” he said. “I always try to give my students more than I received.”
At Davidson Glover will teach courses in “Introduction to Writing Fiction” and “Writing Fiction II.” Although he is anxious to engage students in the classroom, Glover said that he will try to help them understand that learning to write is a life-long process that extends beyond formal instruction. “My goal is that students will be able to take away an enhanced ability to teach themselves about writing through the reading of literature,” he said. “Learning to write in new structures opens new ways for students to think about themselves.”
Outside the classroom, Glover plans to work on a novel, which he hopes to complete by the end of the year.
The college community and general public can meet him and hear him read from his own work in a public reading on Thursday, February 10. That event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the C. Shaw Smith 900 Room of the Alvarez College Union. The event is free. For information, call 704-894-2441.
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,600 students. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson is engaged in “Let Learning Be Cherished,” a $250 million campaign in support of student financial assistance, academic resources, and community life.
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