Life
Born in Calgary, Alberta, and raised on a farm in Erickson, near Creston, British Columbia, his childhood was somewhat isolated. After working as a farm hand, a bank clerk, and a park ranger, Birney went on to college to study chemical engineering but graduated with a degree in English. He studied at the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, University of California, Berkeley and University of London.
During his year in Toronto he became a Marxist-Leninist. Through a brief and quickly annulled marriage to Sylvia Johnston, he was introduced to Trotskyism. In the 1930s he was an active Trotskyist in Canada and Britain and was the leading figure in the Socialist Workers League but drifted away from the movement during World War II.
During the conflict, he served as a personnel officer in the Canadian Army (an experiences that he used in his 1949 novel, Turvey).
In 1946 Birney began teaching at the University of British Columbia, "where he founded and directed the first Canadian creative writing programme." His work led to the establishment of Canada's first Department of Creative Writing at UBC.
In 1995 Birney died of a heart attack.
Read more about this topic: Earle Birney
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell,
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllab’e answered, and was formed how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is ... an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.”
—William James (1842–1910)