New Brunswick’s literary powerhouse, David Adams Richards, and Nova Scotia / Newfoundland’s acclaimed author and arts activist, Joan Clark, have been named to the Order of Canada. Since 1967, the Order of Canada has been Canada’s system of honouring the importance of a Canadian in any field.
David Adams Richards was named a member of the Order of Canada for ”his contributions to the Canadian literary scene as an essayist, screenwriter and writer of fiction and non-fiction.” He has had an epic writing career with a far- reaching influence on writers in the country (yours truly included: Mercy Among the Children had a profound resonance to it, and was perhaps the most gripping novel I have ever read). His career got started remarkably early, having completed his first novel, The Keeping of Gusties (1970), at twenty years of age. He then started up the infamous Ice House Gang writer’s group, and got serious backing and encouragement by icon Alden Nowlan. Since that time he has built one of the most remarkable writing careers of any Canadian, holding claims to fame such as having won the prestigious GG award for both a fiction and non-fiction title (Nights Below Station Street and Lines on the Water, respectively), and moreover, three more of his novels have been shortlisted for the same award, including Mercy Among the Children, which, among other accomplishments, won the Giller prize, the Canadian Booksellers Association author of the year and fiction book of the year, was shortlisted for several other awards, and was a Canada Reads selection.
Joan Clark was named a member of the Order of Canada for “her contributions as an author of literature for both children and adults, and as an arts activist who has supported provincial and national cultural organizations for decades.” Joan is a multi-award-winning author of several genres, published all over the world, who got her real start in 1968 with publication of Girl of the Rockies. Of her long, illustrious career, my favourite work of Joan’s might be the captivating story of “Mad Mory” in An Audience of Chairs, a Globe and Mail book of the year, nominated for the IMPAC award, shortlisted for the Winterset Award, and winner of The Bennington Gate Fiction Award. (Last I heard, Rock Island Productions bought the film rights.) Her career is truly one to admire, I’ve heard nothing but gushing praise of her last two adult novels, Lattitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs, and I love to hear tell of other writers who are obsessive revisers as well. She even went so far as to revise a published work when her 1982 collection of shorts, From a High Thin Wire, was re-released in 2004.
Go buy their novels. Go.
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