Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary
Marketplace brings to light the relationship between writers in Canada
and the marketplace within which their work circulates. Through a series
of conversations with both established and younger writers from across
the country, Kit Dobson and Smaro Kamboureli investigate how writers
perceive their relationship to the cultural economy--and what that
economy means for their creative processes.
The interviews in Producing Canadian Literature focus, in particular,
on how writers interact with the cultural institutions and bodies that
surround them. Conversations pursue the impacts of arts funding on
writers; show how agents, editors, and publishers affect writers' works;
examine the process of actually selling a book, both in Canada and
abroad; and contemplate what literary awards mean to writers. Dialogues
with Christian Bök, George Elliott Clarke, Daniel Heath Justice, Larissa
Lai, Stephen Henighan, Roy Miki, Erín Moure, Ashok Mathur, Lee Maracle,
Jane Urquhart, and Aritha van Herk testify to the broad range of
experience that writers in Canada have when it comes to the conditions
in which their work is produced.
Original in its desire to directly explore the specific circumstances in
which writers work--and how those conditions affect their writing
itself--Producing Canadian Literature will be of interest to scholars,
students, aspiring writers, and readers who have followed these authors
and want to know more about how their books come into being.
