Canadian Literature - Contemporary Canadian Literature: Late 20th To 21st Century

Contemporary Canadian Literature: Late 20th To 21st Century

Following World War II, writers such as Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler, Norman Levine, Margaret Laurence and Irving Layton added to the Modernist influence to Canadian literature previously introduced by F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith and others associated with the McGill Fortnightly. This influence, at first, was not broadly appreciated. Norman Levine's Canada Made Me, a travelogue that presented a sour interpretation of the country in 1958, for example, was widely rejected.

After 1967, the country's centennial year, the national government increased funding to publishers and numerous small presses began operating throughout the country.

In the late 1970s, science fiction fan and scholar of Canadian literature Susan Wood helped pioneer the study of feminist science fiction, and (along with immigrant editor Judith Merril) brought new respectability to the study of Canadian science fiction, paving the way for the rise of such phenomena as the French-Canadian science fiction magazine Solaris.

By the 1990s, Canadian literature was viewed as some of the world's best.

Canadian authors have won international awards:

• In 1992, Michael Ondaatje became the first Canadian to win the Booker Prize for The English Patient.
• Margaret Atwood won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and Yann Martel won it in 2002 for Life of Pi.
• Alistair MacLeod won the 2001 IMPAC Award for No Great Mischief and Rawi Hage won it in 2008 for De Niro's Game.
• Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1998 her novel Larry's Party won the Orange Prize.
• Lawrence Hill's Book of Negroes won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best Book Award.