Gary Barwin


Gary Barwin is a Canadian poet, writer, composer, multimedia artist, performer and educator who lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He writes in a range of genres including poetry, fiction, visual poetry, music for live performers and computers, text and sound works, and writing for children and young adults. His music and writing have been presented in Canada, the US, Japan, and Europe.
Barwin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and emigrated to Ottawa, Ontario in the early 1970s. He graduated from York University with a BFA in Music and a BA in Creative Writing in 1985 where he studied writing with bpNichol, Frank Davey and music with David Mott, James Tenney, and Trichy Sankaran. Barwin received a PhD in Music Composition from SUNY at Buffalo in 1995. Barwin taught music at Hillfield Strathallan College from 2001–2010. He also has taught creative writing at King's University College, in the Certificate in Writing Program at McMaster University, and at Mohawk College, and at the Art Forms for street-involved youth. In addition to books, he is the author of chapbooks and pamphlets, many from his own serif of nottingham editions. His work has appeared in anthologies. He was the Fall 2013 eWriter in Residence at the Toronto Public Library, the 2014-2015 Writer-in-Residence at Western University and the London Public Library, and the writer-in-residence at Hillfield Strathallan College in 2016-2017, the 2017-2018 Writer-in-Residence at McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library, and was 2019 Edna Staebler Writer-in-Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University.
He lives in Hamilton, Ontario with his wife and three children where he directs the Niagara Regional Rhyme Gland Laboratory for the National Rhyme Institute.

Awards

Barwin was the winner of the 2013 City of Hamilton Arts Award, the Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year for 2001 and 2011, and co-winner of 2011 Harbourfront Poetry NOW competition. He has received major grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. He was the recipient of the 1998 Artist Award from the KM Hunter Foundation. Seeing Stars, a YA novel, was a 2001 finalist for the CLA YA book of the year, and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award. In 2010, Barwin was a co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for his book Inverting the Deer.
Barwin's novel Yiddish for Pirates won the 2017 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction.

Books