Alice Major

Alice Major
Born	May 15, 1949 Scotland
Occupation	writer
Nationality	Canadian
Notable works	Welcome to The Anthropocene, and The Chinese Mirror.

Alice Major is a Canadian poet, writer, and essayist, who served as poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta. During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Edmonton Poetry Festival Society as President.

Major emigrated from Scotland with her sister at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario before working as a weekly newspaper reporter in central British Columbia. She has lived in Edmonton, Alberta since 1981. She has a BA (English, history) from Trinity College, Toronto at the University of Toronto, and worked as a freelance writer specializing in utility issues.

She is past-president of the Writers' Guild of Alberta, and the League of Canadian Poets. She has published six collections of poetry. Her poetry has always been influenced by her interest in science and she has published a collection of essays, "Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science" (published by University of Alberta Press in 2011).

Awards

• 2009 Pat Lowther Award

Works

• "The moon of magpies quarrelling", Canadian Poetry Online
• The Chinese Mirror. (Irwin Publishing, 1988) ISBN 0-7725-1707-X
• Time Travels Light. (Rowan Books, 1992) ISBN 1-895836-01-8
• Lattice of the Years. Bayeux Arts Inc. 1998. ISBN 1-896209-25-4.
• Tales for an Urban Sky. Broken Jaw Press. 1999. ISBN 1-896647-11-1.
• Corona Radiata. (St. Thomas Press, 2000) ISBN 0-9685339-3-0
• Some Bones and a Story. (Wolsak and Wynn, 2001) ISBN 0-919897-74-6
• No Monster (Victoria, Poppy Press, 2002) ISBN 978-1-894603-03-4
• The Occupied World. University of Alberta Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-88864-469-5.
• The Office Tower Tales (University of Alberta Press, 2008) ISBN 0-88864-502-3
• Memory's Daughter (University of Alberta Press, 2010) ISBN 978-0-88864-539-5
• Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science (University of Alberta Press, 2011) ISBN 978-0-88864-595-1
• Standard Candles (University of Alberta Press, 2015) ISBN 978-1-77212-091-2

Anthologies

• Vintage'97/98. (Quarry Press, 1998) ISBN 978-1-55082-224-3
• Going it Alone: Plays by Women for Solo Performance. (Nuage Editions, 1997) ISBN 978-0-921833-52-9
• What if...? Amazing stories, Monica Hughes Ed. (Tundra Books, 1998) ISBN 978-0-88776-458-5
• Threshold: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing from Alberta. University of Alberta Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-88864-338-4.
• Poetry and Spiritual Practice: Selections from Contemporary Canadian Poets (St. Thomas Press, 2002) ISBN 978-0-9685339-7-0
• Poetry as Liturgy (St. Thomas Press, 2007) ISBN 978-0-9735910-4-0

Further reading

• Don Perkins: Metaphors, myths, and the eye of the magpie in Ten Canadian Writers in Context. Dir. Curtis Gillespie, Marie J. Carrière, Jason Purcell. University of Alberta Press, Edmonton 2016, pp 115 – 138 (incl. excerpt from The office tower tales, pp 122 – 138). Also in Google books

External links

• Alice Major's website