The Collector Highlights Five Female Canadian Authors Reshaping the Nation's Literature

Key facts

• The Collector featured five female Canadian authors: Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Carleigh Baker, and Margaret Atwood.
• Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) wrote Montreal Stories and lived as an expatriate in Paris for most of her life.
• Alice Munro received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature and wrote Lives of Girls and Women (1971), set in Huron County, Ontario.
• Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Mississauga Nishnaabeg from Wingham, Ontario, and authored Islands of Decolonial Love (2013) and This Accident of Being Lost (2017).
• Carleigh Baker, of Cree-Métis and Icelandic descent, was born in British Columbia on Stó:lō ancestral lands and wrote Bad Endings.
• Margaret Atwood's career spans from 1961's Double Persephone to 2019's The Testaments, including The Handmaid's Tale (1985).
• Atwood's poetry collection The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) reimagines the voice of British immigrant Susanna Moodie, who wrote Roughing It in the Bush (1852).
• The article highlights the authors' exploration of themes such as identity, displacement, colonialism, and belonging in Canadian literature.