Biography

Alistair MacLeod was born on July 20, 1936 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. He was a writer, known for In the Fall (1984), In the Fall (2018) and Reading Alistair MacLeod (2005). He was married to Anita. He died on April 20, 2014 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

He taught English and creative writing at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

He received a PhD from the University of Notre Dame.

In 2008 he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.

When he was 10, his family moved to a farm on Cape Breton Island. The island was the inspiration for his works. Each summer, he returned to Cape Breton and a cliff-top cabin where he did much of his writing.

His only novel, "No Great Mischief," won the 2001 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, then worth $172,000.

One time correcting all my papers and putting circles around their and there and they're," he told a radio interviewer, "I began to think that maybe this wasn't the most worthwhile thing I should be doing with my life and so I said...I'm going to try to write like imaginatively or creatively for two hours a day.

Just make your story as long as a piece of string, and it will work out just fine