Biography

Born in Toronto in 1947, John Steffler grew up in a rural area outside of Thornhill, Ontario. Over the course of his youth, he tried his hand at a wide variety of jobs, including work as a shoemaker, substitute teacher and carpenter. Though Steffler’s roots are based in Ontario, he has lived much of his life in Newfoundland. Graduating from the University of Toronto in 1971 with a B.A. in English, Steffler went on to complete an M.A. in English at the University of Guelph in 1974, where he completed a thesis on the prophetic poetry of William Blake. Shortly thereafter, Steffler was hired on in the English Department of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Since 1975, Steffler has lived and worked in Corner Brook—a point that is clearly reflected in his creative work. On the University of Toronto’s Canadian Poets site he acknowledges the importance Newfoundland plays in his work: “I’ve always been interested in the long-term interaction between people and the place they inhabit. This process is especially striking in Newfoundland where nature is rowdy and naked and people fit right in.” Known primarily as a poet, Steffler has published seven collections of poetry, including the influential wildness text The Grey Islands (1985). While the majority of Steffler’s creative output is poetry, his most critically acclaimed text is his revisionist historical novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright. Published in 1992, this postcolonial examination of the life of the Labrador explorer George Cartwright was shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award and won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. In 2002, Steffler published Helix: New and Selected Poems (2002), and the collection Lookout in 2010. From 2006 to 2008 Steffler served as  Canada's Poet Laureate.

Bibliography

  • An Explanation of Yellow: Poems. Ottawa: Borealis, 1980.
  • Things the Light has Made. Ottawa: Borealis, 1980.
  • The Grey Islands. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
  • Flights of Magic. Victoria: Porcepic Books, 1987.
  • The Wreckage of Play: Poems. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988.
  • The Afterlife of George Cartwright: A Novel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.
  • catalogue essay. Kent Jones: Paintings, Prints and Drawings. 1996.
  • That Night We Were Ravenous. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998.
  • Helix: New and Selected Poems. Montreal: Signal Editions, 2002.
  • Uses of Poetry. St. John's: Memorial University, 2008.
  • Lookout. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2010.
Selected Overviews
The Afterlife of George Cartwright
The Grey Islands

Click on selected overview to read...

Critical Sources

  • Beardsworth, Adam. "'Nature's Not in It: The Postcolonial Wilderness in John Steffler's The Grey Islands." Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 25.1 (2010): 91-114.
  • Bennett, Donna. "No Fear of Fiction: Life-Writing in the English-Canadian Novel." La Création biographique/Biographical Creation. Dvorak, Marta (ed. and introd.). Rennes: PU de Rennes, 1997. 203-10.
  • Daurelle, Florence. "Terre-Neuve: Terre-renouvelée à ré-explorer, dans The Shipping News (1993) d'E. Annie Proulx, et The Afterlife of George Cartwright (1992) de John Steffler." Etudes Canadiennes/Canadian Studies: Revue Interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiennes en France 46 (1999): 131-41.
  • Jaeger, Peter. "'The Land Created a Body of Lore': The Green Story in John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright." English Studies in Canada 21.1 (1995): 41-54.
  • McConnell, Kathleen. "Textile Tropes in The Afterlife of George Cartwright." Canadian Literature 149 (1996): 91-109.
  • Renger, Nicola. "'Tampering with the Truth': John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright in Dialogue with History." Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en Littérature Canadienne 27.1 (2002): 69-87.
  • Strong, Joan. "Approaches of White Regret: John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright and Harold Horwood's White Eskimo." Echoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative. Moss, John (ed. and preface). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997. 113-21.
  • Stacey, Robert David. "Ghost of a Chance: John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright and the Meaning of History." University of Toronto Quarterly 75.2 (2006): 718-26.
  • Sugars, Cynthia. "The Impossible Afterlife of George Cartwright: Settler Melancholy and Postcolonial Desire." University of Toronto Quarterly 75.2 (2006): 693-717.
  • Tremblay, Tony. "Piracy, Penance, and Other Penal Codes: A Morphology of Postcolonial Revision in Three Recent Texts by Rudy Wiebe, John Steffler, and Joan Clark." English     Studies in Canada 23.2 (1997): 159-73.

    See also:
  • Herb Wyile, Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) 181-86.