Poet, novelist, playwright, and critic Dr. George Elliott Clarke is a native of Windsor, Nova Scotia. He is a seventh-generation Canadian of African American and Mi'kmaq Indigenous descent. He earned his BA from the University of Waterloo, MA from Dalhousie University, and PhD from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (which is where I first met him.) Clarke has served as both Poet Laureate of Toronto, Ontario and Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, and he teaches Canadian literature at the University of Toronto. He is a member of the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada. He has written too many books to mention but some particular favourites of mine are Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, Whylah Falls which he later adapted for the radio and stage, Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems, Execution Poems: The Black Acadian Tragedy of George and Rue, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award, Red, Black, Blue, Gold, White, Canticles, War Canticles, Canticles III, and Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (2021.) He’s also the author of many critical and scholarly works, including Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (2002).
George Elliott Clarke is no stranger to the Detroit River borderlands and to BookFest/Festival du Livre Windsor in particular, and this October, he’ll be appearing BookFest Windsor again. On October 14th, he’ll be appearing at the Windsor launch of his latest project, Black Scientist, Black Activist, Black Icon, and on October 15th, he’ll be part of the always popular BookFest Windsor event, the Poetry Café.
Available from Nimbus Publishing.
About BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor https://www.literaryartswindsor.ca/bookfest/