Alice Major | |
---|---|
Born | 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.[1]
She has published 12 collections of poetry and a collection of essays on poetry and science. Her work has received multiple awards, most recently an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.[2]
Major emigrated from Scotland 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.[3] Her first book was a prize-winning YA fantasy novel. Since then she has published 12 books of poetry and an essay collection on poetry and science.
She is past-president of both the Writers' Guild of Alberta and the League of Canadian Poets,[4][5] as well as former chair of the Edmonton Arts Council.[6] In 2005, she was appointed to a two-year term as the first poet laureate for the City of Edmonton, and then went on to receive the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2017.[7] During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006.[8] In November 2019 she received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Alberta.