Aritha Van Herk
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Aritha van Herk (born 26 May 1954[1]) is a Canadian writer, cultural critic, and academic.
She was born in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, near Edmonton, Alberta. Her parents and elder siblings immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands before she was born. She grew up in a bilingual home, speaking English and Dutch. Van Herk studied Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Alberta, Edmonton and received a B.A in 1976, and an M.A. in 1978 In 1974, she married Robert Sharp, who is a geologist. Aritha van Herk has been teaching creative writing at the university of Calgary since 1983.
The immigrant experience and the subject of home strongly influence her work. Her books moslty feature strong women fighting against societal norms and the expectations of their families. Other important themes are the Canadian identity and the Canadian north. Van Herk’s work is known to be experimental and always pushing the boundaries of genre and gender.
Aritha van Herk has written eight books, four of them literary novels. The others are difficult to categorize, being an uneven mixture of autobiography, literary criticism, history, and description of place. She has published numerous short stories, essays, articles, and book reviews that have appeared in literary journals, mainstream magazines, and Canada's better-known newspapers. She has edited and co-edited numerous books, many by ex-students who have defined their own reputations under van Herk's guidance. Her work has been translated into several languages.
Contents |
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novels
- Judith (1978) (winner of the $50,000 Seal Book Award)
. (Judith deals with a secretary turned pig farmer, dealing with the differences between rural and urban Canada. Judith was widely translated and earned the Seal Canadian First Novel Award.)
- The Tent Peg (1981) (story of a woman who disguises herself as a young man in order to get a job as a bush-cook for a team of geologists who work in the north of Canada)
- No Fixed Address: An Amorous Journey (1986) (Story of Arachne Manteia who criss-crosses the Canadian Prairies in her black vintage Mercedes, selling underwear and finally disappearing into the Canadian north. This novel is a parody of the picaresque genre. In No Fixed address, the picara is an underwear saleswoman. No Fixed Adres was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for fiction. )
- Restlessness (1998) (published in 1998 is the story of Dorcas who hires a professional killer because she is tired of life and wants to die. The story becomes a reverse Sheherazade and a close inspection of Calgary.)
[edit] Non-fiction
- In Visible Ink (1991) (a collection of experimental criticism)
- A Frozen Tongue (1992) (a collection of experimental criticism)
- Places Far From Ellesmere: Explorations on Site: A Geografictione (1990) (An attempt to combine travel narrative of exploring the Canadian Arctic island of Ellesmere and literary criticism of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina)
- Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta (2001) (Penguin-paperback published in 2002)
Over the years, a lot of Van Herk’s short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers including The Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, Elle, Chatelaine, Canadian Forum, Canadian Fiction Magazine, and the anthology Alberta Bound.
[edit] External links/References
- Official Aritha van Herk site << under construction >>
- Information, pictures and an interview of Aritha van Herk
- Aritha Van Herk's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
- Aritha van Herk, Department of English, University of Calgary
- Aritha van Herk Special Collections at the University of Calgary Library
- Aritha van Herk BioCritical Essay by I.S. MacLaren
