A new website about the late Robert Kroetsch, a Canadian novelist, poet and academic, has been developed by U of G professor Smaro Kamboureli, School of English and Theatre Studies.
Intended for general readers and scholars, the website robertkroetsch.ca discusses the life and works of what Kamboureli calls “one of the most important literary figures in Canada, especially in prairie writing and postmodernism.”
Kroetsch published novels, including Badlands and What the Crow Said; poetry collections, including The Stone Hammer Poems and Seed Catalogue; and non-fiction. He won the 1969 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for his novel The Studhorse Man; his poetry collection The Hornbooks of Rita K was nominated in 2001 for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
He was named as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2004. Last year, he received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award.
Kroetsch taught at the State University of New York at Binghamton and at the University of Manitoba. He died in a car accident in Alberta in 2011, just before his 84th birthday.
Kamboureli is director of U of G’s TransCanada Institute and holds the Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature.