Keith Maillard

Who is Keith Maillard?

Keith Maillard is a fiction author and poet.

Maillard has lived in various places in the United States and Canada. He attended West Virginia University and was host of a Boston campus radio programme. He moved to Canada in 1970, attaining citizenship in 1976.

In the early 1970s, Maillard worked as a freelancer for CBC radio, contributing pieces to This Country in the Morning, Five Nights, and Our Native Land. He was active in the Writers' Union of Canada, served on the National Council for two years, and co-founded the Federation of BC Writers. Maillard studied music at Vancouver Community College, played the Irish pipes, taught recorder and the rudiments of music for the Vancouver School Board and Vancouver Community College, and played bass in the first band formed by Vancouver singer-songwriter, Ferron.

Maillard's first published novel, Two Strand River, appeared in 1976. Most reviewers didn't know what to make of this strange book with its cross-gendered protagonists and weird events, but Two Strand River soon acquired a cult following, came to be labeled "a classic of Canadian magic realism," and has been republished twice.

Maillard's second published novel was actually the first one he had begun; the book rejected by twenty-six publishers finally — after having passed through eight major rewrites — appeared in 1980 as Alex Driving South. In this gritty, naturalistic tale, Maillard first introduced the fictional town of Raysburg, West Virginia, where most of his novels have been set. The Knife in My Hands followed in 1981, and its sequel, Cutting Through, in 1982. Then, with a fifth book half completed, Maillard was afflicted with writer's block.