Ron Smith

In 2011, Ron Smith published Kid Dynamite: the Gerry James Story, his biography of the only athlete to have competed in the finals of two major sports in the same season, the Grey Cup and Stanley Cup. "A must-read for both diehard football and hockey fans," said Jim Bender in the Toronto Sun and "a fascinating inside view of two sports," commented Gordon Sinclair in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Born in Vancouver on August 7, 1943, Ron Smith (BA, UBC; MA Leeds), taught at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo between 1971 and 1998. From 1988 to 1991 he was the fiction editor for Douglas & McIntyre.

With Stephen Guppy he co-edited Rainshadow Stories from Vancouver Island. In 1984 he released a suite of poems, Seasonal (Sono Nis), about his daughter and about which Robert Bringhurst wrote: "It's a wonderful book....There are not many sequence of poems being published these days which it is cleansing to read, but this is one." He followed this with a book-length poem entitled A Buddha Named Baudelaire in 1988. Since then he has published two more books of poetry, a collection of fiction, and an illustrated book for children Elf the Eagle which was short-listed for the BC Book Prizes and the Shining Willow Award in Saskatchewan. He has given reading and lecture tours in the U.S., Italy, Albania, England and across Canada. In 2002, a selection of his poetry was translated by Ada Donati and published in a book-length bilingual edition, Arabesque e altre poesie, in Italy (Schifanoia Editore).

He received an Honorary Doctorate, D. Litt., from UBC in the spring of 2002 and was named the inaugural Fulbright Chair in Creative Writing at Arizona State University in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the Gray Campbell Award for distinguished service to the BC publishing industry.

He lives with his wife, Patricia Jean Smith, also a writer, in Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island. He has played an essential role in the growth of literary, historical and public policy publishing in British Columbia.