Ken McGoogan (Chair)
Ken McGoogan (Toronto, ON) is the author of four best-selling nonfiction books about the search for the Northwest Passage: Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Race to the Polar Sea. His awards include the Writers’ Trust of Canada Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Canadian Authors’ Association History Award, the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography, and the Pierre Berton Award for History. Ken made a cameo appearance in the BBC docudrama based on his book Fatal Passage. He has also published three novels, one of which (Visions of Kerouac) was published in Quebec and France as Le Fantome de Kerouac.
For two decades, Ken worked as a journalist, moving from The Toronto Star to The Montreal Star and The Calgary Herald, where he served as books editor and literary columnist. These days, he reviews for the Globe and Mail and writes a column for Canada’s History (the magazine formerly known as The Beaver). Ken has worked as a writer-in-residence in Fredericton, Dawson City, Yukon, and Hobart, Tasmania, and currently teaches narrative nonfiction at the University of Toronto.
He is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and sails in the Northwest Passage as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. Born in Montreal, raised in a French-speaking town, Ken is multi-ethnic, pan-Canadian and deeply rooted (ancestors include a Canadien who arrived from France in 1619). In autumn 2010, he will publish How the Scots Invented Canada.
Ken McGoogan is the representative of The Writers' Union of Canada.
