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    A Life with Words: A Writer's Memoir
    A Life with Words: A Writer's Memoir
    A Life with Words: A Writer's Memoir
    Ebook226 pages4 hours

    A Life with Words: A Writer's Memoir

    By Richard B. Wright

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    From the acclaimed writer of the beloved Clara Callan comes a beautifully crafted, charming portrait of the writing life. Combining his characteristic wit and self-deprecation with his extraordinary imagination and insight, Richard B. Wright has created a deeply affecting memoir that reads like a novel.

    As a small, watchful boy growing up in a working class family in Midland, Ontario, during the Second World War, Wright gradually discovered that he saw the world through different eyes. His intellectual and sexual awakenings, his exploits as a young salesman in Canadian publishing, his painful struggles to become a writer—all of this is balanced against the extraordinary reception that in the 1970s greeted his first novel, The Weekend Man, which was published around the world to great acclaim. In spite of the sometimes crippling depression that haunted him and the ups and downs of the mid-life writer, he would finally achieve overwhelming success with Clara Callan, the Giller-winning work that swept every award in Canada and revitalized his career.

    Lovers of Wright’s work will appreciate behind-the-scenes glimpses of his craft in individual novels and his exploration of how a writer transmutes experience into art. And readers will enjoy his thoughtful exploration of the essential role of storytelling in our lives. A Life with Words is both a celebration of the writing life and a deeply personal—at times revelatory—invitation into the world of the imagination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9781476785363
    A Life with Words: A Writer's Memoir
    Author

    Richard B. Wright

    Richard B. Wright is the author of nine novels, including The Age of Longing, In the Middle of a Life, and Weekend Man. He lives with his wife in Saint Catharines, Ontario.

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    • 4/5
      I've read five of Richard B. Wright's novels, including his surprisingly successful debut, THE WEEKEND MAN, and his best known one, the best-selling CLARA CALLAN, which won pretty much all of Canada's most prestigious literary awards. So I'm a confirmed fan, and very much enjoyed this memoir about his childhood as a dreamy kid, the youngest of five, growing up in a small Ontario town in the 40s and 50s. After college, where he majored in Radio and Television Broadcasting, he took some very low-paying jobs with small newspapers and radio stations, before landing a job in publishing with Macmillan's of Canada. He married, had a child, and took a year off to write. The happy result was THE WEEKEND MAN, which launched him as an important young writer in Canada, and a literary life that had its ups and downs. His books never made him wealthy, so he spent many years teaching in a private school. Wright was several years older than me, and Canadian, yet there was plenty here I could relate to, especially the books and writers he read and admired. While A LIFE WITH WORDS (2015) was informative, entertaining - and often funny too - my enjoyment of Wright's story was marred by the knowledge that he died in 2017, after a fall and a subsequent stroke. He was 79. I was also a bit disappointed at the end of his narrative, which just seemed to trail off, concluding with a transcript of a speech he delivered at a college commencement. But I'm glad the book was published and I got to read it. And I'm even gladder that there are still several more Wright novels I haven't yet read. But I will, I hope. Because this guy was a damn fine writer. RIP, Richard.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

    Book preview

    A Life with Words - Richard B. Wright

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