TORONTO, November 22, 2000 -- Barbadian-Canadian author Austin Clarke, the grand-daddy of African-Canadian literature, will be honoured November 24-25 at a conference on his work entitled Surviving the Crossing, sponsored by York University’s Centre for the Study of Black Cultures in Canada.

The conference celebrates Clarke’s outstanding contribution to the Canadian literary tradition, particularly his dynamic and often uncomfortable portrayal of the experiences of Black and West Indian Canadians. Among the international scholars and writers assembling to discuss his work are: author and York Professor Barry Callaghan; Ramabei Espinet, a scholar of Caribbean Religions and a fellow of the York Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean; Bruce Meyer, poet and scholar of Canadian literature and modern poetry; and University of the West Indies (Jamaica) Professor Michael Bucknor. Readings and a reception will be held on Friday, November 24, 5:30 p.m. at Bigliardi’s restaurant on Church St., and the conference will convene on Saturday, November 25 from 9:30 a.m. in the Hart House Library, University of Toronto.

Clarke’s fiction has been praised as deeply nuanced and visionary, and his prose style as uncommonly gifted in its articulation of a common humanity. He was born on the island of Barbados in 1934 and arrived in Canada in 1955 to attend university. He is the author of nine novels and five short-story collections, and has also had a distinguished career as a broadcaster, civil rights leader, and professor in Canada and the United States. He is a 1998 recipient of the Order of Canada, and of numerous literary and lifetime achievement awards, including the 1999 W.O. Mitchell Prize, which is given each year to a Canadian writer who has produced an important body of work and served as a caring mentor for other writers.

Clarke’s eighth novel, The Origin of Waves (McClelland & Stewart, 1997), was written after an 11-year writing hiatus and received wide, critical acclaim. Last year he published Pigtails and Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir (Random House Canada/New USA Press), and The Question (McClelland & Stewart), which was short-listed for the 2000 Governor General’s Award in fiction. In 1998, Vintage Canada re-released his three early novels known as The Toronto Trilogy, and a memoir, Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in the Toronto trilogy, about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. Also among his earlier novels are: The Survivors of the Crossing, Amongst Thistles and Thorns, and Proud Empires. Clarke’s 10^th novel, The Polished, will be published in 2002.

The Centre for the Study of Black Cultures in Canada at the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University aims to stimulate and serve as a focal point for African Canadian studies across Canada, and to work with the Faculty of Education at York to encourage curriculum development and teaching practices sensitive to the needs of the various black communities in Toronto schools.

Conference details are available on the Web site of the Centre for the Study of Black Cultures in Canada, www.yorku.ca /research/aconline.

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For more information, please call:

Prof. Rinaldo Walcott
Division of Humanities
York University
(416) 363-2532
rwalcott@yorku.ca

Susan Bigelow
Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22091
sbigelow@yorku.ca
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