Alistair
MacLeod

Alistair MacLeod was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1936 and raised among an extended family in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He spent his summers in Inverness County, writing in a clifftop cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island. In his early years, to finance his education he worked as a logger, a miner, and a fisherman, and writes vividly and sympathetically about such work.

During the winter months Dr. MacLeod was a professor of English at the University of Windsor Ontario. His early studies were at the Nova Scotia Teachers College, St. Francis Xavier, the University of New Brunswick, and Notre Dame, where he took his Ph. D. He has also taught creative writing at the University of Indiana. Working alongside W.O. Mitchell, he was an inspiring teacher to generations of writers at the Banff Centre. Alistair MacLeod has given lectures and readings from his work in many cities in Canada and around the world.