Literary Birthday – 20 July – Alistair MacLeod

Alistair MacLeod was born on 20 July 1936 and died on 20 April 2014.

Alistair MacLeod Quotes

1. I write a single sentence at a time, and then I read it aloud.
2. I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.
3. No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived.
4. There is a kind of belief among my students that things that are true are interesting. But most things that are true are not interesting. Four pages describing how I got up and brushed my teeth in the morning would kill you.
5. If people aren’t creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticise.
6. Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don’t think that should be there.
7. Measure twice; cut once.

Alistair MacLeod was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and academic. His fiction often explores the lives of working-class people in Cape Breton, including miners, loggers, fishermen, and farmers. His 1999 novel No Great Mischief was voted Atlantic Canada’s greatest book of all time. His short fiction is available in Island: The Collected Short Stories. He was the first Canadian to receive the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2001. In 2008 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2009 he shared the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction with the American author Amy Hempel.

Source for image: Graham Iddon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
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