Surveying his own conflicted, multi-cultural life from a Bombay boyhood, immigration to Canada, and his re-invention as a literary and theatre critic, poet, and editor who has learned to understand life’s blessings and wounds, Keith Garebian’s autobiography is an act of memory at the service of a changing self. Using vignettes, letters, historical surveys, meditations, and existential summations, Pieces of My Self shows Garebian’s trauma, fury, condemnation, ardour, melancholy, satire, and self-understanding. Figures of Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, William Hutt, Irving Layton, Hugh Hood, John Metcalf, Henry Beissel, V.S. Naipaul, and many others pass through this life of a restlessly critical and self-critical author.

Keith Garebian is the author of five previous poetry collections — Frida: Paint Me As a Volcano (Buschek), Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems (Signature), Children of Ararat (Frontenac), and Moon On Wild Grasses (Guernica) — and fourteen books of non-fiction. His writing has earned him numerous awards, including the William Saroyan Medal (Armenia), three Mississauga Arts Awards (Established Literary), Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch) Poetry Awards, and numerous grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.

Keith Garebian's profile page