Randall Maggs

Born in Vancouver, Randall Maggs grew up on the move in an Air Force family. After joining up himself for a brief period as a flyer, he left the service to travel through Europe and North Africa and to return to university to do graduate work at Dalhousie and UNB. For the last thirty years, he has lived on the west coast of Newfoundland, teaching Literature and Creative Writing at Memorial’s Grenfell College. With Irish poet John Ennis and Stephanie McKenzie, Maggs edited two anthologies, However Blow the Winds, containing Irish and Newfoundland poetry and song, and The Echoing Years, containing Irish and Canadian poetry. Maggs is the Artistic Director of Newfoundland’s March Hare, the largest literary festival in Atlantic Canada.

His most recent collection, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems (Brick Books) was launched in Canada at the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame and in Ireland at the Canadian Embassy in Dublin. According to the author and Globe and Mail sports columnist, Stephen Brunt, Night Work may be the “truest hockey book ever written. It reaches a level untouched by conventional sports literature.” The book has aroused more than a little interest in both the sports and literary worlds. It has been featured in the sports sections of many major newspapers, including the National Post and the Montreal Gazette. At the same time, it was selected for the cover review in the Globe and Mail’s Books section.