Biography

Leo McKay, Jr. grew up in Stellarton in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. He comes from a family of miners, on both his mother's and father's sides, though his father was a union organizer and worked at the railcar works in nearby Trenton. In 1995, he published his first book, the short-story collection, Like This, which was short-listed for the Giller Prize. His first novel, Twenty-Six, based on the 1992 explosion at the Westray mine in Stellarton which resulted in the deaths of twenty-six miners, was published to much acclaim in 2003. The novel became a national bestseller and won the 2004 Dartmouth Book Award. It was focused on what McKay calls a literary memory, capturing not the political or economic impacts but rather the way that the event changed the way both himself and other authors write about this region and that period in history. Although arriving on the literary scene with much fanfare due to the Giller recognition, McKay has resisted the lure of stardom, maintaining a living and taking his time to make his subsequent projects (including Twenty-Sixi>) true to his intentions rather than the commercialized publishing world. On top of his writing, he also served as the editor of PRISM international, the oldest literary magazine in Western Canada, and contributes to the Globe and Mail Book Review. After teaching English in Japan for many years, McKay has long taught English and Creative Writing at Cobequid Educational Centre in Truro.

Bibliography

  • Like This. Concord, Ont.: Anansi, 1995.
  • Twenty-Six. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003.
  • Roll up the Rim. Truro: Red Row House, 2013.
Selected Overviews
Twenty Six
Like This

Click on selected overview to read...

Critical Sources

  • Chewter, Cynthia L. Rev. of Twenty-Six. Dalhousie Review 83.2 (2003): 311.
  • Demont, John. "Pits of Sorrow." Maclean's. 116.20 (May 2003): 59.
  • Hynes, Maureen. Rev. of Twenty-Six. Our Times 22.3 (2003): 38.
  • Jarman, Mark A. "Memorial for a death trap: a Nova Scotia novelist captures the horror and the pity of Westray [Twenty-Six.]" Literary Review of Canada. 11.5 (Jun 2003): 23.
  • MacBride, Craig. "A Review of: Twenty-Six." Books in Canada 32.8 (2003): 11. [Link]
  • Methot, Andrea. "Miner's Memorial: an industrial explosion changes a small community forever in Leo McKay Jr's Twenty-Six" Quill & Quire 69.3 (March 2003): 16-21. [Link]
  • Rev. of Like This: Stories. Quill & Quire 62.1 (1996): 30.
  • Taylor, Craig. "Meri's Lament." Rev. of Twenty-Six. Quill & Quire 69.5 (May 2003): 32. [Link]
  • Thompson, Peter. "Extraction, Memorialization, and Public Space in Leo McKay's Twenty-Six." Studies in Canadian Literature 37.2 (2012): 96-116.

Videos

Writing about Westray (16mb)
The Influence of Family History (12.6mb)
The Global Context of the Novel (13.6mb)
The Political Context of the Novel (15.7mb)
The Generational Gap in the Novel (10.5mb)
A Reading from Twenty-Six (23.8mb)