March 2012: Greg Hollingshead

Writer or professor?

I was a pro­fes­sor for 30 years, but now I’m retired. From about Year 20 of my teach­ing career, I was mainly teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing. I have always defined myself as a writer first, but teach­ing lit­er­a­ture can go with that just as well as teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing can. My aca­d­e­mic field was eighteenth-century British lit­er­a­ture. It was a plea­sure to bring my inter­ests together in Bed­lam, a novel set in the Lon­don asy­lum by that name, around 1800. I could almost hear the voices, because I had read enough on the eigh­teenth century.

On being involved with TWUC

Thirty years this year, I think it is, I have been a mem­ber of TWUC. For me the Union pro­vides what most of our mem­bers value most: a sense of com­mu­nity and a voice for advo­cacy. More per­son­ally, I was a friend of Matt Cohen’s in the days when he was part of the fight for the Pub­lic Lend­ing Right (PLR), which has con­tin­ued to be a won­der­ful pro­gram for writ­ers. I think of my ser­vice as chair this year as in mem­ory of Matt.

Impor­tant issues at TWUC – Is there a life after bill C11?

Cana­dian books in the schools is a big one. Oth­er­wise what is now dom­i­nat­ing our mem­bers’ atten­tion is dig­i­ti­za­tion and all its impli­ca­tions, includ­ing roy­alty rates for ebooks and the growth of self-publishing.