Macleod, Alistair, 1936-2014 : Alistair MacLeod (né John Alexander Joseph MacLeod) was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan in 1936. His parents had moved west to escape the hardship of Depression-era Nova Scotia. In 1946, his family returned to their farm in Inverness County, Cape Breton where they lived among extended family. It was here that MacLeod finished high school. In his early years he worked as a logger, miner and fisherman to finance his education. MacLeod pursued studies at the Nova Scotia Teachers College (graduating in 1956) after which he taught a year of grade school in Port Hood. He graduated from St. Francis Xavier in 1960 with a Bachelor in Arts and Education. He then attended the University of New Brunswick where he received a Masters degree in 1961, having written a thesis on the Canadian short story of the 1930's. He went on to teach at Nova Scotia Teachers College (1961-1963) before pursuing a doctorate at Notre Dame University where he specialized in British 19th Century Literature and wrote a PhD thesis on Thomas Hardy (PhD, 1968). MacLeod then taught creative writing at the University of Indiana, Bloomington before returning to Canada in 1969.
Alistair MacLeod received early recognition of his talents when his second story "The Boat" was published in Massachusetts Review in 1968 and was selected for Best American Stories 1969 (Houghton-Mifflin's annual collection and a second story "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" was chosen subsequently for Best American Stories 1975). Alistair MacLeod was hired to the Creative Writing Department at the University of Windsor in 1969, teaching alongside Joyce Carol Oates and Eugene McNamara. He taught English and Creative Writing and was instrumental in bringing many Canadian writers to speak at Windsor, in particular, arranging a writer-in-residency for W.O. Mitchell. MacLeod was selected as the Canadian participant in the Canada Scotland Writers in Residence Exchange Program for 1984-1985. He was made a university professor in 1993. He acted as fiction editor for the Windsor Review between the 1970's and 2000's.
Each summer the MacLeods and their six children returned to Inverness County from Windsor. Near to the family home, MacLeod constructed a clifftop cabin overlooking the sea toward Prince Edward Island in which to write. MacLeod published two volumes of finely-honed short stories drawing on the land and people of Cape Breton: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). It was for these fourteen stories which he was recognized by critics, fellow-writers and readers until the publication of his novel No Great Mischief in 1999. Joyce Carol Oates introduced MacLeod's stories to a wider American audience with the publication of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood: New and Selected Stories (Ontario Review, 1988) which was chosen by Publisher's Weekly as one of the best books of 1988. The novel No Great Mischief became an international best-seller and garnered the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Trillium Award for Fiction, the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and two Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards. Additionally, MacLeod was awarded the Dublin IMPAC Award in 2001 for the novel, becoming the first Canadian author to win the honour. Following the novel, a volume of collected stories Island was published in 2000 and contained the stories from the two earlier volumes as well as two new stories ("Island" and "Clearances").
Alistair MacLeod has taught many workshops, particularly at the Banff Centre (where he taught alongside W.O. Mitchell for 10 years) and the Humber School for Writers. He has served on many literary prize juries (including the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, the Giller Prize, the W.O. Mitchell Award and the Journey Prize). His work has been translated into 15 languages including Gaelic and his work is widely anthologized and used in school curricula. His stories have been adapted to stage and film: in particular a play "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" staged by Mulgrave Road Theatre Co-op (1983) and a film of "In the Fall" by Allan Kroeker (1983). Alistair MacLeod is the recipient of numerous honourary degrees including Saint Francis Xavier (1987). His life and work are the subject of a biographical film co-sponsored by the NFB and CBC titled "Reading Alistair MacLeod" (2005). Alistair MacLeod retired from the Department of English at the University of Windsor in the spring of 2002, becoming professor emeritus.
