Background
John Andrew Wainwright was born on May 12, 1946, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
John Andrew Wainwright was born on May 12, 1946, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
John Wainwright earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1969; a Master of Arts in 1973 and a Doctor of Philosophy (cum laude) in Canadian Literature in 1978 from Dalhousie University.
John Wainwright has been an English professor at Dalhousie University since 1979, focusing on modern and postmodern Canadian literature; Native-Canadian Studies; gender studies; multicultural fiction and poetry; intercultural issues, and popular culture. Now he is McCulloch Emeritus Professor in English, who's influences include islands, Lawrence Durrell, Patrick White novels, and Bob Dylan's lyrics.
John Wainwright's first foray into Canadian literature was as editor of an anthology called Notes for a Native Land in 1969 and Soundings: New Canadian Poets in 1970 with Jack Berry Ludwig. In 1987, he published a poetic treatment of Captain Robert Scott’'s final expedition. In Flight of the Falcon: Scott's Journey to the South Pole 1910-1912, Wainwright tells the story of Scott's race to be the first to reach the Pole, his heartbreaking loss to Norwegian Roald Amundsen, and the return trip that finished off Scott and his four fellow explorers.
In A Deathfitl Ridge: A Novel of Everest, Wainwright's first novel, he takes up the theme of another doomed adventurer, George Herbert Leigh-Mallory, who died in 1924 on the slopes of Mount Everest in his third attempt to reach the summit. In Wainwright's retelling, Mallory survives but kills his traveling partner, Andrew Irvine (who actually died with him). To save his heroic reputation, he and the surviving members of the expedition concoct the story of his death, and he returns in secret to live out his days in a small Welsh town.
In A Very Large Soul: Selected Letters from Margaret Laurence to Canadian Writers, Wainwright gives a glimpse of a different kind of pioneer. As a writer and a mentor, Margaret Laurence not only set a standard for excellence in her fiction, she also launched a sort of renaissance for Anglophone Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Wainwright himself, many of whom drew inspiration from her works and personal contact with her.
(Universal in scope, yet focusing on recognizable Canadian...)
2004(Two unrelated, aspiring writers, born on the same day in ...)
2020(Boon, an aging gunfighter, looks back on his time as the ...)
2015(A Deathful Ridge rewrites the life and myth of George Mal...)
1997
John Wainwright is married to Marjorie Stone. They have two sons, Michael and Eric.
