In the course of a writing life that has spanned more than five decades and encompasses almost eighty books of fiction, poetry, history, and criticism he's written and another thirty that he's played an editorial role in, George Bowering has learned a thing or two about the craft.

Writing and Reading features thirty recent essays, ranging from a single paragraph to 12,000 words, spanning the range of the author's curiosity, which includes collecting, difficulty, film, painting, photography, music, and Vancouver's poets from Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars to the present day. Bowering writes perceptively about his encounters with texts, and writers, including David Bromige, Judith Fitzgerald, Gerard Manley Hoplins, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, Joe Rosenblatt, and every book he read in 1967, Canada's centennial year.

Running through Writing and Reading is the theme of reading — and paying attention — and its centrality to any writing practice.

George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate, was born in the Okanagan Valley.After serving as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Bowering earned a BA in English and an MA in history at the University of British Columbia, where he became one of the co-founders of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. He has taught literature at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario, and Simon Fraser University, and he continues to act as a Canadian literary ambassador at international conferences and readings.A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian, and tireless supporter of fellow writers, Bowering has authored more than eighty books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography, and youth fiction. His writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and Romanian.Bowering has twice won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s top literary prize. In 2019 he received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.

George Bowering's profile page