Keith Maillard (born 28 February 1942, in Wheeling, West Virginia) is an American Canadian novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia.Keith Maillard, UBC Creative Writing He moved to Canada in 1970 (due to his opposition to the Vietnam War)Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, eds., A Companion to the Vietnam War (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), 431.Robert McGill, War is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature (McGill Queens, 2017), 198, 277. and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.Ohio County Public Library, "Wheeling Hall of Fame: Keith Maillard,"William H. New, "Keith Maillard," Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2002), 700.
Family background
Maillard has French, Canadian, and American roots. His Huguenots great grandparents immigrated to Montreal from Lyon, France, in the early 1880s. His Maillard grandfather and two Montreal-born uncles continued the family tradition of glass-blowing, working for Dominion Glass in Montreal and in Redcliff, Alberta.Keith Maillard, Fatherless: A Memoir (West Virginia University Press, 2019).
Maillard's parents divorced when he was a baby and he never knew his father.Keith Maillard, "Hot Springs, Arkansas," Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011. His father, Eugene C. Maillard, avoided glassblowing work, trained as a draughtsman, and worked for twenty-five years at the Hanford Site nuclear plant in Richland, Washington.Keith Maillard, "Richland," Numero Cinq Magazine, Vol.II No.3, March 2011. Maillard's mother's family settled in the Ohio River Valley in the late 18th century and it is from her family stories that Maillard draws inspiration for much of his historical fiction. He describes the process of his earliest childhood fiction in his 2011 essay, "Kilroy: A Writer's Childhood."Keith Maillard, "Kilroy: A Writer's Childhood," Numero Cinq Magazine, Vol. II No. 5, May 2011.
Keith Maillard is married with two daughters"Keith Maillard," Contemporary Authors Online, Detroit: Gale, 2012 and lives in West Vancouver. His mother-in-law is Canadian novelist Rohan O'Grady."June Margaret nee O'Grady Skinner," The Vancouver Sun, 22 March 2014
Career
1960s
Maillard left his native West Virginia in 1965 and moved to Boston where he lived for five years. He worked in the anti-Vietnam-war movement from 1968 to 1970 and contributed numerous articles to Boston underground newspapers and radio: Fusion, Broadside, The Free Press of Boston and WBUR.Keith Maillard fonds, University of British Columbia In 1970, disillusioned after the Kent State shootings, he emigrated to Canada.Keith Maillard, Dementia Americana (Ronsdale Press, 1994), 12. He was not eligible for the draft and was a war resister rather than a draft dodger.
1970s
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 also contributed to periodicals, including Fusion, The Body Politic, Malahat Review, Books in Canada, Canadian Literature, and newspapers. He was in the Writers' Union of Canada, served on the National Council for two years,Anne Innis Dagg, Smitten by a Giraffe: My Life as a Citizen Scientist (McGill-Queens, 2016), 131. 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. He co-produced and arranged her second album Backed Up in 1978. In the late 1970s Maillard taught writing workshops in Vancouver's literary centre, The Literary Storefront, and participated in a number of readings and other events there.Trevor Carolan, The Literary Storefront: The Glory Years 1978–1985 (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2015), 61, 101, 117, 121, 122, 126, 135-36, 227. .Nicholas Bradley, review of The Literary Storefront: The Glory Years 1878–1985, BC Studies, No. 191, Autumn 2016. In 1979 Maillard interviewed Canadian novelist Howard O’Hagan who explained to him his writing process; the interview appeared as a chapter in Margery Fee's Silence Made Visible: Howard O’Hagan and Tay John (1992).Margery Fee, ed. Silence Made Visible: Howard O’Hagan and Tay John (ECW Press, 1992), 21-38.
Maillard's first published novel, Two Strand River, appeared in 1976, published by Dave Godfrey's Press Porcépic. Most reviewers were confounded by 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,Geoff Hancock, "Keith Maillard," The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, eds., William Toy and Eugene Benson (Oxford University Press, 1997, online 2006), 717-718.Peter Hinchcliffe and Ed Jewinski, Magic Realism and Canadian Literature (Wilfrid Laurier University, 1985), 82.Stephen Slemon, "Magic Realism as Post Colonial Discourse," chapter in Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, eds., Magic Realism: Theory, History, Community (Duke University Press, 1995), 409. and has been republished twice.
1980s
Maillard's second published novel was actually the first one he had begun; the book rejected by 26 publishers finally – after having passed through eight major rewrites – appeared in 1980 as Alex Driving South.Clark Blaise, "Relearning Freedom," review of Alex Driving South, Canadian Literature 89 (Summer 1981): 131-133.Kirkus Reviews 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, influenced by American writer Jack Kerouac, 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 Agency and, from 1986 to 1989, he workshopped his screenplay, Two Strand River, with Patricia Gruben's Praxis Film Development Workshop (Simon Fraser University).Marsha Lederman, "Celebrated B.C. screenwriting program Praxis to fold," The Globe and Mail, 19 November 2013.
Maillard's fifth novel, Motet, published in 1989, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize Reviewer David Homel assured readers that despite the novel's sixteenth-century Dutch choral mystery and Vancouver setting, "power and madness made in the USA is still at the heart of Maillard's creativity."David Homel, "Harmonics," Books in Canada, 1989
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 10 years.
1990s
While at UBC, Maillard began what he considers his mature work – what has come to be known as the "Raysburg Series."Meredith Sue Willis, "Keith Maillard: Five Novels of Raysburg, West Virginia," Appalachian Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3/4 (2004): 358-366.Gordon Simmons, "Literature," e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, 4 February 2014. Web. 1 May 2018Gordon K. Neufeld, "Laugh, cry, and laugh again," Books in Canada, Vol. 31, Issue 9, December 2002. Called "a small masterpiece" by the Georgia Straight, Light in the Company of Women was published in 1993Lorraine York, "Photographic Mixtures," Canadian Literature 141 (Summer 1994): 115-116.Michael Happy, Review of Light in the Company of Women, Books in Canada, Vol. 22, Issue 5, (Summer 1993): 46-47. 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.Commonwealth Writers' Prize Shortlist
Maillard's novel, Gloria (1999), was well received in Canada,T. F. Rigelhof, Hooked on Canadian Books: The Good, the Better, and the Best Canadian Novels Since 1984 (Cormorant Books, 2010), 258. short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction,Anne-Marie Tobin, "Matt Cohen, Keith Maillard among GG literary finalists," Canadian Press Newswire, 9 October 1999. and brought him national attention in the United States.Jesse Browner, "Little Gloria Free at Last," The New York Times, 8 October 2000GLORIA by Keith Maillard, starred review, Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2000
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 Canada.Gerald Lampert Memorial Award He became interested in the re-emergence of formal poetry in North America and commented about it in his oft-cited essay, "The New Formalism and the Return of Prosody."Paul Scott Derrick, Lines of Thought: 1983–2015 (Universitat de Valencia, 2015), 143.Gerry Cambridge, "The New Formalism," Jay Parini, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2004), 251, 253-54.Thomas Cable, "Connoisseurs of sound and the new formalism," Revue Francaise d'Etudes Americaines, No. 84 (March 2000):52-52Keith Maillard, review of Rebel Angels, The Antigonish Review, 109 (1999).Keith Maillard, "The New Formalism and the Return of Prosody," in R.S. Gwynn, New Expansive Poetry (1999): 52-71.Catherine Addison, A Genealogy of the Verse Novel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 424.Gregory Dowling, "New Formalism: Dangerous Nostalgia or Angellic Rebellion?" Letteratura e letterature, 3 (2009): 1-20.
2000s
The last of the "Raysburg Series", The Clarinet Polka (2002), was well received in the United States, particularly by the Polish American community.Etelka Lehoczky, "Books in Brief: Fiction and Poetry," The New York Times, 4 May 2003David James Jackson, " 'Another Polka Rockin' Weekend': Polish American Polka Music, Identity, and Traditional Values," Polish American Studies, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Spring 2014), 47.William Hal Gorby, "Saints, Sinners, and Socialists on the Southside: Polish Catholic Immigrant Workers, Politics, and Culture in Wheeling, West Virginia, 1890-1930," PhD thesis, University of West Virginia (2014), 2, 120, 123, 124, 128, 129, 351, 355-56.T. J. Napierkowski, "The Clarinet Polka: Life, Literature, Music," Polish American Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Autumn 2004): 9-24. It received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews,Inside jacket copy, Keith Maillard, Looking Good (2006), n.p. and was included in Booklist’s Editors’ Choice ’03. It won the Polish American Historical Association's Creative Arts Prize, and came to the attention of scholars in Poland.Booklist's Editors' Choice: Adult Books, 2003Polish American Historical Association Creative Arts PrizeA. Branach-Kallas, "Folkloristic Hybrids: Diaspora Space in The Clarinet Polka by Keith Maillard," Przegląd Polonijny, Vol. 31, Issue 2 (2005):105-112.
Maillard was one of 35 writers placed on the West Virginia Literary Map in 2004 and he was inducted that year into the Wheeling, West Virginia, Hall of Fame.