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Search - List of Books by Keith Maillard

Keith Maillard (born 28 February 1942 in Wheeling, West Virginia) is a fiction author and poet.

Maillard has lived in various places in the United States and Canada.He attended West Virginia University and was host of a Boston campus radio programme.He moved to Canada in 1970, attaining citizenship in 1976.

In the early 1970s, Maillard worked as a freelancer for CBC radio, contributing pieces to This Country in the Morning, Five Nights, and Our Native Land. He was active in the Writers' Union of Canada, served on the National Council for two years, and co-founded the Federation of BC Writers. Maillard studied music at Vancouver Community College, played the Irish pipes, taught recorder and the rudiments of music for the Vancouver School Board and Vancouver Community College, and played bass in the first band formed by Vancouver singer-songwriter, Ferron.

Maillard's first published novel, Two Strand River, appeared in 1976. Most reviewers didn't know what to make of this strange book with its cross-gendered protagonists and weird events, but Two Strand River soon acquired a cult following, came to be labeled "a classic of Canadian magic realism," and has been republished twice.

Maillard's second published novel was actually the first one he had begun; the book rejected by twenty-six publishers finally ... after having passed through eight major rewrites ... appeared in 1980 as Alex Driving South. In this gritty, naturalistic tale, Maillard first introduced the fictional town of Raysburg, West Virginia, where most of his novels have been set. The Knife in My Hands followed in 1981, and its sequel, Cutting Through, in 1982. Then, with a fifth book half completed, Maillard was afflicted with writer's block.

From 1985 through 1988 Maillard applied his writing skills to designing university and adult education courses for The Open Learning Institute. His fifth novel, Motet, was published in 1989 and won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Having taught as a sessional lecturer at both the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University, Maillard was appointed in 1989 to a regular teaching position in UBC's Creative Writing Department, where he has taught every genre except stage writing. He served as Advisory Editor of PRISM International for ten years. He is currently a full professor, co-chair of the department, and specializes in fiction and poetry.

While at UBC, Maillard began what he considers his mature work — what has come to be known as the “Raysburg Series." Called "a small masterpiece" by the Georgia Straight, Light in the Company of Women was published in 1993 and was runner-up for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. It was followed in 1995 by Hazard Zones, which was included on the Toronto Star's list of the best Canadian books for that year and was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Maillard also returned to his first love, poetry, and published Dementia Americana, which won the Gerald Lampert Award for the best first book of poetry published in 1994. Gloria (May, 1999) was short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. The Clarinet Polka, was included in Booklist’s Editors’ Choice ’03 and has been optioned by Los Angeles filmmaker Liz Friedlander.

In 2004, he returned to the raw material first published in The Knife in My Hands and Cutting Through and rewrote and reshaped it into the Difficulty at the Beginning quartet, which appeared in four volumes between September 2005 and September 2006. The Toronto Globe and Mail selected Difficulty at the Beginning as one of the top books of 2006, calling it "a work of terrible beauty and grace, a masterpiece fit to contend with the best novels of the last century."

Maillard currently lives in West Vancouver, British Columbia.

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This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Keith Maillard", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 25
Looking Good Difficulty at the Beginning
2006 - Looking Good Difficulty at the Beginning (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781897142097
ISBN-10: 1897142099
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Morgantown
2006 - Morgantown [Difficulty at the Beginning] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781897142073
ISBN-10: 1897142072
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
 1

Running Difficulty at the Beginning Book 1
2005 - Running Difficulty at the Beginning Book 1 [Difficulty at the Beginning] (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781897142066
ISBN-10: 1897142064
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

The Clarinet Polka  A Novel
2004 - The Clarinet Polka a Novel (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780312308902
ISBN-10: 0312308906
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 4.3/5 Stars.
 2

The Clarinet Polka A Novel
2003 - The Clarinet Polka a Novel (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780312308896
ISBN-10: 0312308892
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 4

Gloria  A Novel
2001 - Gloria a Novel (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780060935979
ISBN-10: 0060935979
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Substores
  • Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
 4

Gloria
2000 - Gloria (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9781569472064
ISBN-10: 1569472068
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 2.8/5 Stars.
 3

Two Strand River
1996 - Two Strand River (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780006481430
ISBN-10: 0006481434
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Hazard Zone A Novel
1996 - Hazard Zone a Novel (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780002243971
ISBN-10: 0002243970
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
 1

Dementia Americana
1994 - Dementia Americana (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780921870289
ISBN-10: 0921870280
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Light in the Company of Women
1994 - Light in the Company of Women (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780006475330
ISBN-10: 0006475337
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Motet
1989 - Motet (Other)
ISBN-13: 9780394220284
ISBN-10: 0394220285
  ?

Motet A Novel
Motet a Novel (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780006481638
ISBN-10: 0006481639
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Alex Driving South
Alex Driving South (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780385270014
ISBN-10: 0385270011
  ?

The Knife in My Hands
The Knife in My Hands [New Press Canadian Classics] (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780773670563
ISBN-10: 0773670564
Genre: Literature & Fiction
  ?

Cutting through
Cutting Through (Other)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780773720039
ISBN-10: 0773720030
  ?

Lyndon Johnson And the Majorettes Difficulty at the Beginning