Bill Gaston

Department Chair
Professor

B.A. (UBC), M.A. (UBC), M.F.A. (UBC)

Office: FIA 249

Phone: +1.250.721.7306

E-mail: bgaston@uvic.ca
Photo by ClownBog Studios    

Areas of Research & Creative Activity

Fiction, creative nonfiction, drama for stage and screen.

Biography

Bill Gaston came to the Writing Department in 1998 following a dozen years in the Maritimes, mostly at UNB, in Fredericton. There he was Director of the Creative Writing Program, and, for a time, editor of Canada's oldest literary journal, The Fiddlehead. He's also lived in Toronto, Winnipeg, and France, and spent his formative years on the slopes of North Van. He worked at the usual struggling-writer jobs, typically in universities but also in group homes, but the most exotic of these were fishing guide, swamping for a cat at a logging show, and playing hockey in the south of France. He now leads a more settled existence in Gordon Head, where he resides with writer Dede Crane and their four children.

Selected Professional & Creative Achievements

Bill has published six novels—Tall Lives, The Cameraman, Bella Combe Journal, The Good Body, Sointula, and The Order of Good Cheer—five collections of short fiction—Deep Cove Stories, North of Jesus' Beans, Sex Is Red, Mount Appetite, and Gargoyles. He has also published a “bullshit memoir”, Midnight Hockey, a collection of poetry, Inviting Blindness, as well as a play, Yardsale. Several of his books have been translated into several languages. His fiction has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, and the Ethel Wilson Prize, and has won the Relit Award, the Victoria/Butler Prize, and the CBC Canadian Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in Granta, Tin House, Best Canadian Stories, and broadcast nationally on the CBC. In 2003 he was presented with the inaugural Timothy Findley Award, for a body of work.

Selected Publications

 

Gargoyles

Published by Anansi Press
http://www.anansi.ca
 

Sointula

Published by Raincoast Books
http://www.raincoast.com
 

Mount Appetite

Published by Raincoast Books
http://www.raincoast.com