David Gilmour (writer)

David Gilmour
Born	1949 London, Ontario

Not to be confused with the musician, David Gilmour.

David Gilmour (born 22 December 1949) is a Canadian novelist and television journalist.

Gilmour was born in London, Ontario. He became managing editor of the Toronto International Film Festival in 1980, and held the post for four years. In 1986, he joined CBC Television as a film critic for The Journal, eventually becoming host of the program's Friday night arts and entertainment magazine. In 1990, he began hosting Gilmour on the Arts, an arts magazine series on CBC Newsworld.

He left the CBC in 1997 to concentrate on his writing. His 2005 novel A Perfect Night to Go to China won the 2005 Governor General's Award for English fiction, and was longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award. He is a graduate of Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto.

In June 2007, Gilmour won two gold National Magazine Awards for his essay "My Life with Tolstoy" which appeared in The Walrus magazine.

Novels

• Back on Tuesday (1986)
• How Boys See Girls (1991)
• An Affair with the Moon (1993)
• Lost Between Houses (1999)
• Sparrow Nights (2001)
• A Perfect Night to Go to China, Thomas Allen Publishers (2005)
• The Perfect Order of Things, Thomas Allen Publishers (2011)
• Extraordinary, Patrick Crean Editions (2013

Memoir

• The Film Club, Thomas Allen Publishers (2007)

Controversial Teaching Practices

On September 25, 2013, Random House Canada published an interview with Gilmour in the the "Shelf Esteem" column of their online magazine Hazlitt in which he was quoted as saying,

"I can only teach stuff I love. I can’t teach stuff that I don’t, and I haven’t encountered any Canadian writers yet that I love enough to teach. I’m not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. Except for Virginia Woolf. And when I tried to teach Virginia Woolf, she’s too sophisticated, even for a third-year class. Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth."

External links

• David Gilmour's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• David Gilmour
• CBC: David Gilmour wins GG for English fiction