Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature Elaine Kalman Naves
Biography
Over the course of half a century, as radio producer, editor, talent scout, impresario, and anthologist, Robert Weaver nurtured and sustained three generations of writers. Among those he gave their earliest breaks to were Alice Laidlaw (who became Alice Munro), Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley, and Leonard Cohen.
This book is an unbuttoned and colourful biography and an extended riff on the development of modern Canadian literature. It includes archival photographs and letters, as well as interviews with Weaver himself and with ALice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Alistair MacLeod, Barry Callaghan, Robert Fulford and Janice Kulyk Keefer.
Elaine Kalman Naves is an award-winning author of three books about literary Montreal: The Writers of Montreal, Putting Down Roots: Montreal’s Immigrant Writers, and, with Bryan Demchinsky, Storied Streets: Montreal in the Literary Imagination. Her two family memoirs, Journey to Vaja and Shoshanna’s Story, have won critical praise and many prizes.
“I don’t know another person in the CBC who was as loved and as admired and as warmly felt about as Bob Weaver.” —Eric Friesen
“An admirable tribute to a ‘wonderfully talented, energetic, and modest man’ who never stepped into the limelight.” –Literary Review of Canada
ISBN: 978-1-55065-233-8