Background

Keith Harrison was born on June 18, 1945, in Vancouver, Canada. He was the son of John Robert and Margaret (Reid) Harrison.

Education

Keith grew up on the West Coast and studied at the University of British Columbia, where he took a creative writing course from Earle Birney. He played for Canada's National Field Hockey team and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1967.

He moved to California, receiving a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. Returning to Canada, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy at McGill University, writing on the works of Malcolm Lowry.

Career

For nearly two decades Keith Harrison lived and worked in Montreal, teaching primarily at Dawson College. In 1991 Harrison took a position as a professor of English and Creative Writing and Journalism at Malaspina University-College, now known as Vancouver Island University.

In addition to his books of fiction, Harrison wrote scholarly articles focused on such writers as Byron, Patrick Lane, Pat Lowther, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Melville, Ian McEwan, Ondaatje, and Shakespeare. He also wrote essays on documentary films, comics, exploration literature, narrative theory, and ice hockey.

Primarily a fiction writer, Harrison wrote a group of stories, Crossing the Gulf (1998), which contains a piece that won the Okanagan Short Story Award, and he edited an anthology of short fiction, Islands West: Stories from the Coast (2001).

His five novels are Dead Ends (1981), a tale of two cities, Vancouver and Montreal; After Six Days (1985), about a pair of contemporary couples; Eyemouth (1990), set mainly in Scotland during the French Revolution and its aftermath and taking the form of letters; Furry Creek (1999), a documentary fiction exploring the life, death, and art of Pat Lowther; and Elliot & Me (2006), a doubled-voiced narrative about a mother and her teenaged son.

Keith Harrison's 'non-fiction novel' Furry Creek: A True-Life Novel is a hybrid of court transcripts, letters, literary criticism, poetry, 'quasi-biography' and shards of autobiography described as literary archaeology. It investigates the murder of the poet Pat Lowther by her husband and also pays homage to her life and work. Harrison first encountered Lowther's writing while teaching poetry at Dawson College in Montreal, prior to Lowther's murder. At the time he was drawn by her West Coast imagery. The attraction to Lowther's poetry remained at the exploratory heart of Furry Creek 25 years later.

Harrison went to the Vancouver Court House to get trial records and was surprised to learn that not all court records are kept and, if they are kept, they are not available to the public. He wrote a letter to Chief Justice Dohm requesting access to the Lowther transcripts. Beth Lowther was visiting Judge Dohm at this time, trying to get access to a rare photograph of her mother. Judge Dohm passed along Keith Harrison's phone number and Pat Lowther’s daughter, Beth, got in touch.

Harrison's novel Elliot & Me is a tender, funny, moving double narrative about two people who don't understand each other. Elliot is a bright, reckless 17-year old who has just quit school late in his graduating year. Megan, his mother, is a woman who is haunted by the death of her father while she was 'traipsing' through China, and is tired of being viewed as a beautiful work of art. The threatened return of Elliot's father, Jack, a huge American ex-ballplayer, causes Megan and Elliot to flee from their home in East Vancouver to Hornby Island.

Harrison's 1990 diary-style novel Eyemouth recalls a maritime disaster that killed his great-grandfather who lived in Eyemouth, Scotland. Nineteen years later Harrison was invited to Eyemouth as a featured speaker for the town's literary festival.

Keith Harrison's understated love story, The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed is a non-fiction work braiding more family history, travel writing, and cultural anthropology.

His ninth and final book was a scholarly study, Shakespeare, Bakhtin, and Film: A Dialogic Lens, a study of Mikhail Bakhtin who, while living under Stalin. Harrison made use of these concepts to help illuminate the creativity behind the global proliferation of Shakespeare on screen.

Achievements

• Keith Harrison was a respected professor of English and Creative Writing and Journalism at Vancouver Island University. Upon retirement, he was honored by VIU as Academic Emeritus. As a writer, he became known for experimental writing that utilizes a wide variety of themes and styles. During his long career, Keith received numerous nominations and awards, including Finalist for Best First Novel in Canada Award (1981), Okanagan Short Story Award (1991), Finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (1999).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Elliot and Me

    (Elliot & Me is a tender, funny, moving double narrative a...)

    2006
  • Islands West

    (Islands West offers an exciting cross-section of contempo...)

    2001
  • Crossing the Gulf : Stories 1998
  • Dead Ends: A Novel 1981
  • Eyemouth 1990
  • Furry Creek 1999
  • The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head was Squeezed 2010
  • Shakespeare, Bakhtin, and Film: A Dialogic Lens 2017

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Mikhail Bakhtin

• Writers

  William Shakespeare, Malcolm Lowry

• Sport & Clubs

  hockey, basketball, tennis

Connections

In 1965 Keith married JoAnn. The couple had two sons, John-Paul and Justin.

Father:

John Robert Harrison

Mother:

Margaret (Reid) Harrison

Brother:

Douglas Harrison

Sister:

Joan Harrison

Wife:

JoAnn Harrison

Son:

John-Paul Harrison

Son:

Justin Harrison

mentor:

Earle Birney