Biographer, critic and textual editor Sandra Djwa is professor emerita of English at Simon Fraser University, and the author of important biographies of F.R. Scott, Roy Daniells and P.K. Page. She has also written extensively on Sinclair Ross, Margaret Atwood and Al Purdy. Her biography of P.K. Page, Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen's 2012), was shortlisted for the inaugural Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize as well as the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. It later won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, in 2013. [See review below.]

Born in Newfoundland on April 16, 1939, she came to British Columbia in 1958 and obtained her Ph.D. in English at the University of British Columbia in 1968, when the department was overseen by Roy Daniells. She was then appointed Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. She was Chair of the English Department between 1986 and 1994. She was Chair of Canadian Heads and Chairs of English in 1989. She was elected to the Royal Society in 1994 and received an honorary doctorate from Memorial University, Newfoundland, in 2002.

Her biography of F.R. Scott, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Prize in 1987. It was translated as F.R. Scott: Une Vie by Florence Bernard and short-listed for the Governor-General's Award in French Translation in 2002.

Her biography of Roy Daniells, Professing English: A Life of Roy Daniells was awarded the Lorne Pierce Gold Medal for literature from The Royal Society of Canada in 2002. She also edited the memoirs of Carl F. Klinck, editor of The Literary History of Canada, and delivered a keynote address on Klinck at a one-day symposium in conjunction with the launch of this book, Giving Canada A Literary History: A Memoir by Carl F. Klinck in 1991. She was also Klinck's literary executor.

The first woman to write the review of the year's work in "Poetry" for the University of Toronto Quarterly, Djwa was also, in 1973, co-founder of ACQL, The Association for the study of Canadian and Quebec Literatures. Sandra Djwa was the second graduate of UBC, and the first woman, to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture at UBC in 1999 in honour of the department's 80th anniversary.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page

BOOKS:

Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen's, 2012) 9780773540613 $39.95

Professing English: A Life of Roy Daniells. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

F.R. Scott: Une vie, translation of F.R. Scott: The Politics of the Imagination, trans. Florence Bernard. Montreal: Editions du Boreal, publication 15 November, 2001.

Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock, eds. Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt, with an introduction by Sandra Djwa. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Monograph: Professing English at UBC: The Legacy of Roy Daniells and Garnett Sedgewick. The 1999 Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2000.

Giving Canada a Literary History: A Memoir by Carl F. Klinck, ed. Sandra Djwa. Ottawa/London: Carleton University Press for University of Western Ontario, 1991.

Complete Poems of E.J. Pratt: A Definitive Edition, two vols., eds. Sandra Djwa and Gordon Moyles with introduction, annotations, variants, unpublished verse, and textual notes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987.

Paperback: The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1989.

On F.R. Scott: Essays on His Contributions to Law, Literature and Politics, eds. Sandra Djwa and R.St.J. MacDonald. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983.

Saul and Selected Poetry of Charles Heavysege, ed. Sandra Djwa with introduction, bibliography, and notes (Literature of Canada: Poetry in Reprint). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.

E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision. Toronto/Montreal: Copp Clark/McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

1968 Ph.D. English, University of British Columbia, Canada "The Continuity of English Canadian Poetry"
1964 B.Ed. Honours English (First Class), University of British Columbia, Canada

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY AT ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
2002 - 2004 Woodsworth Resident Scholar, Humanities, Simon Fraser University
1981 - 2002 Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University
1986 - 1994 Chair, Department of English, Simon Fraser University
1973 - 1980 Associate Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University
1968 - 1973 Assistant Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University

[Lisa Hartley photo]

[Alan Twigg / BCBW 2013] "Literary Criticism" "Biography"