Bill Gaston was the University of New Brunswick's ninth writer-in-residence from 1990 to 1992. Having grown up in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver, he recieved his B.A., M.A., and M.F.A. attending the University of British Columbia. While Gaston was around UNB he was also the director of the creative writing programme, and for a period of time he was the editor of The Fiddlehead, Canada's oldest literary journal. In 1998 he left the Maritimes to join the creative writing department at the University of Victoria. In 1999 he won a Canadian Literary Award for fiction, and in 2003 he was awarded the inaugural Timothy Findley Award for a mid-career male writer.
Bill Gaston succeeded to the position of writer-in-residence after Nancy Bauer, and after Gaston the title was passed on to Don Hannah.
Tony Tremblay said of Bill Gaston "I have [...] heard him read many times, and each time he has succeeded in winning over his audience with a wit and vision that is gentle, benevolent, and uproariously funny. He is a master of comic incongruity, able to translate the excesses of our culture into the exaggerated peculiarities of his characters - and all this without compromising the basic humanity, frailty, and unfailing optimism central to each. Though much has been said of his writing, I think the most accurate is inscribed on the back cover of Deep Cove Stories: 'with humour and insight, Bill Gaston seeks to discover a little madness in an otherwise too sane world... He reaquaints us with magic.'"
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Source(s):
UA Case 191; Section 2; Bill Gaston