Aritha Van Herk
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Aritha van Herk is a Canadian writer, cultural critic, and academic.
She was born in Wetaskiwin, 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. The immigrant experience and the subject of home strongly influence her work. Her books feature strong women fighting against societal norms and the expectations of their families.
Aritha van Herk has written eight books, four of them literay 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.
Since the mid-1980s, she has taught creative writing in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.
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[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novels
- Judith (1978) (winner of the $50,000 Seal Book 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.)
- Restlessness (1998) (published in 1998 is the story of Dorcas who hires a professional killer because she is afraid to commit suicide. 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)
[edit] External links/References
- http://www.arithavanherk.com Official Aritha van Herk site << under construction >>
- http://www.arithavanherk.de for more information, pictures of and an interview with Aritha van Herk
- http://www.english.ucalgary.ca/faculty/a_vanherk.htm Aritha van Herk, Department of English, University of Calgary
- http://www.ucalgary.ca/library/SpecColl/vanherk.htm Aritha van Herk Special Collections at the University of Calgary Library
- http://www.ucalgary.ca/library/SpecColl/vanherkbioc.htm Aritha van Herk BioCritical Essay by I.S. MacLaren
