Sandra Djwa

Sandra Djwa (born April 16, 1939) is a Canadian writer, critic and cultural biographer. Originally from Newfoundland, she moved to British Columbia where she obtained her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1968. In 1999, she was honored to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture in honor of the department's 80th anniversary. She taught Canadian literature in the English department at Simon Fraser University from 1968 to 2005 when she retired as J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar, Humanities. She was part of a seventies movement to establish the study of Canadian literature and, in 1973, cofounded the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures (ACQL). She was Chair of the inaugural meeting of ACQL. She initiated textual studies of the poems of E. J. Pratt in the eighties, was editor of Poetry, "Letters in Canada" for the University of Toronto Quarterly (1980-4), and Chair of Canadian Heads and Chairs of English (1989).

She is best known for articles on Canadian poets like Margaret Atwood and for her biographies of distinguished Canadians including F.R. Scott, and Roy Daniells. A biography of the poet PK Page, ''Journey With No Maps'', was released in 2012. Djwa's biography of Scott was shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Prize in 1988 and a French translation, "F.R. Scott: Une vie," was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award in French Translation in 2002. That same year, the biography of Roy Daniells was awarded the Lorne Pierce Gold medal for literature from the Royal Society of Canada.

Djwa was named to the Order of Canada in 2020 for her contributions to the fields of Canadian literature and Canadian literary criticism.

She has also edited and introduced other books, including the memoirs of Carl F. Klinck, first editor of "The Literary History of Canada". In 1981 she was awarded a Killam Senior Fellowship, in 1994 elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and in 1999 the Trimark Award for Mentoring. In 2002, Djwa was awarded an honorary degree from Memorial University, Newfoundland. She is now a general editor of the "Collected Works of P.K. Page".

The biography of PK Page, ''Journey With No Maps'' was released in the fall of 2012 by McGill-Queen's University Press. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. It also won the 2013 Governor General Award for Non-fiction.

She gave the convocation speech and received the honorary Doctor of Letters ''honoris causa from'' McGill University, in Arts and Religious Studies, June 2016. Provided by Wikipedia