Keith Maillard
Biographical Information
West Virginia-born Keith Maillard has been a writer, a teacher, a folk singer, and a photographer throughout the course of his career. Maillard was born February 28, 1942, in Wheeling, WV. He attended West Virginia University in the early 1960s before moving on to pursue his career. He traveled throughout the United States and Canada for much of the rest of the decade, before settling in Canada in 1970. He became a Canadian citizen in 1976, and continued his vocations as writer, musician, and music teacher.Maillard published his first novel, Two Strand River, in Canada in 1976. The book focuses on two individuals – one male, one female – who each feel that they belong to the other gender. The unique novel was described by a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer as a story that “transcends the boundaries between the sexes, between humanity and nature, and between imagination and reality.”
Since, then, Maillard has published nine novels and a collection of poetry, including Motet, which won the Ethen Wilson Fiction Prize (1990) and Light in the Company of Women, which was first runner-up for the same award (1994). Despite having lived in Canada for nearly a quarter of a century, Maillard has never forgotten his West Virgina roots. Many of his novels are set in West Virginia – in a city he calls Raysburg, and one which he compares to Faulkner’s Mississippi, a “mythic version” of his own hometown and experiences.
Currently, Keith Maillard is a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Vancouver. His current writing project is Difficulty at the Beginning, a four-volume novel series that follows the life of John Dupre as he grows up in Raysburg. The first three volumes – Running, Morgantown, and Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes are already in print. Volume 4 – Looking Good – is due to be released in September 2006.
Critical Responses
Despite having left his home state for Canada nearly a quarter of a century ago, Keith Maillard remains one of the major chroniclers of life in the Mountain State. His Raysburg series spans nearly a century, each book taking on the style and character of its time period. Commenting on Difficulty at the Beginning, Natalee Caple remarked “Keith Maillard has constructed a credible world in Raysburg, through which the reader gleans new insights into the politics, pretences, and possibilities of both the recent past and the disturbing present.”Maillard has garnered much critical recognition and several awards for his work. The novel Motet won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 1990; Light in the Company of Women was the runner up for the same award in 1994. His lone poetry collection, Dementia Americana, was awarded the Gerald Lampent Award for poetry (1996). Another novel, Hazard Jones, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Literary Prize (1996), and Gloria was short-listed for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction (1999). And the Polish American Historical Association awarded him its Creative Arts Prize for The Clarinet Polka (2004). In addition, he is a member of the Wheeling, WV Hall of Fame and a West Virginia Library Association Literary Merit Award winner.
Works Published
- Two Strand River
- Alex Driving South
- The Knife in My Hands
- Cutting Through
- Motet
- Light in the Company of Women
- Dementia Americana
- Hazard Jones
- Gloria
- The Clarinet Polka
- Running
- Morgantown
- Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes
Selected Bibliography
Browner, Jesse. Little Gloria, Free At Last. New York Times Book Review. October 8, 2000. 150(51535), 22.Cart, Michael. Running (book review). Booklist. September 15, 2005. 120(2), 32.
Grubisic, Brett Josef. Guy Talk. Canadian Literature. Autumn 1997. 154, pp. 147+.
Leber, Michele & Shirley E. Havens. Word of Mouth. Library Journal. May 1, 1997. 122(8), 164.
Lehoczky, Etelka. The Clarinet Polka (book review). New York Times Book Review. 152(52473), 24.
Orange, John. Faux Fifties. Canadian Literature. Summer 2002. 173, pp. 118+.
Sandborn, Tom. The Unbearable Lightness of Being American. The Globe and Mail. June 10, 2006. D12.
Shedden, Lee. A Conversation with Keith Maillard. Brindle & Glass. February 23, 2003. http://www.brindleandglass.com/magazine/maillard_interview.htm.
Weiss, Allan. Strong Voices. Canadian Literature. Autumn 2004. 182, pp. 153-154.
Willis, Meredith Sue. Keith Maillard: Five Novels of Raysburg, West Virginia. Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review. Spring-Summer 2004. 31(3-4), 358-66.
York, Lorraine M. Photographic Mixtures. Canadian Literature. Summer 1994. 114, pp. 115.
Author Website
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