John Wesley Metcalf (born 12 November 1938) is an English-born Canadian writer, editor and critic.

Personal life

Metcalf was born in Carlisle, England on 12 November 1938. His father, Thomas Metcalf, was a clergyman and his mother, Gladys Moore Metcalf, was a teacher. He immigrated to Canada in 1962 and here began to write. In 1975 he married Myrna Teitelbaum and now lives with her in Ottawa, Ontario.

Writing career

Metcalf's first attempt at writing fiction came when he entered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Short Story Essay Contest which was followed by eight of his short stories being accepted by the Vancouver-based magazine Prism International. He supplemented his writing career with teaching jobs. His first novel Going Down Slow follows a young teacher as described above as he deals with morality in the workplace, and his second novel, General Ludd, describes a similar character, fighting the implementation of communications technology in his workplace.

Awards

Forde Abroad won the 1996 Gold Medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards.

The Estuary won University of Western Ontario's President's Medal for the Best Story of 1969.

Metcalf was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2004.

Selected works

  • The Lady Who Sold Furniture, 1970
  • Going Down Slow, 1972
  • The Teeth of My Father, 1975
  • Girl in Gingham, 1978
  • General Ludd, 1981
  • Kicking Against the Pricks, 1982
  • Selected Stories, 1982
  • Adult Entertainment, 1986
  • What is a Canadian Literature?, 1988
  • Shooting the Stars, 1992
  • Freedom from Culture, 1993
  • An Aesthetic Underground: A Literary Memoir, 2003
  • Forde Abroad, 2003
  • Standing Stones, 2004
  • Shut Up He Explained: A Literary Memoir Volume II, 2007
  • The Museum at the End of the World, 2016

Sources

Further reading

  • Reingard M. Nischik: The English Short Story in Canada: From the Dawn of Modernism to the 2013 Nobel Prize. McFarland, 2017 (ch. 12, pp 176 sequ.; and passim)
  • John Metcalf's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia