Sherrill Grace (b. 1944) has been at the centre of international research into Malcolm Lowry and his writing. As a member of the UBC English Department, she edited essays of criticism about Malcolm Lowry's work, Swinging the Maelstrom, and wrote The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry's Fiction. Lowry's papers are housed at UBC's Special Collections. [See Malcolm Lowry entry.]

Grace has also written a book about Margaret Atwood's fiction, A Violent Duality (Vehicule Press 1980), and co-edited (with Lorraine Weir) an essay collection, Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System.

Among those who ponder and discuss Canadian identity, Grace is known for her book Canada and the Idea of North, a synthesis of 150 years of representations of the Canadian North in art, music, fiction, poetry, and drama. On the Art of Being Canadian looks at some examples of how Canadian art has affected the imaginative construct we call Canada.

While working on a book about Tom Thomson, Sherrill Grace edited and introduced a new version of Mina Benson Hubbard's 1905 memoir A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador (McGill-Queens 2004), an illustrated account of the first recorded white person's crossing of Labrador. Her subsequent study of the painter who drowned in 1917, Tom Thomson, examines his influence and appeal as an iconic figure.

Sherrill Grace was appointed to the Brenda and David McLenn Chair in Canadian Studies, 2003-2005. With Jerry Wasserman she has co-edited Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice (Talonbooks 2006). It was followed by her biography, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollack, an account of the life of the New Brunswick-raised playwright who overcame an abusive marriage to raise six children and twice win the Governor-General's Award for Drama (for Blood Relations and for Doc). At the time of its publication, Grace was President, Academy 1, of the Royal Society of Canada.

Sherrill Grace was the Brenda and David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies from 2003 to 2005. In 2008, Sherrill Grace, received the Canada Council Killam Prize in Humanities. [The Killam Prizes were inaugurated in 1981 and financed through funds donated to the Canada Council by Mrs. Dorothy J. Killam in memory of her husband, Izaak Walton Killam. The Prizes were created to honour eminent Canadian scholars and scientists actively engaged in research, whether in industry, government agencies or universities.] A press release stated, "In her influential writings-18 books and over 200 chapters and articles-she has drawn on her vast erudition in such areas as theatre, literature, autobiography, the relationships between literature and the other arts, scholarly publishing and women's writing to shape new understandings of such towering Canadian figures as Margaret Atwood, Malcolm Lowry and Tom Thomson. In theatre, another major focus, she has written a biography of playwright Sharon Pollock, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock; examined connections between drama and expressionism; and organized an international symposium at the University of British Columbia-where she is a professor of English and a Distinguished University Scholar-on the relationships between autobiography and performance. This event produced the co-edited book Theatre and AutoBiography, with contributions from academics and artists."

To mark the centenary of Malcolm Lowry's birth, one of the world's pre-eminent Lowry scholars, Sherrill Grace, has gathered her work on Canada's most famous alcoholic for Strange Comfort: Essays on the Work of Malcolm Lowry (Talonbooks $19.95) and dedicated her collection to the pioneering and somewhat saintly UBC librarian Anne Yandle (1930-2006), one of the people most responsible for making UBC Special Collections into a treasure trove of archives for Lowry research and scholarship. It includes a new essay on Lowry's legacy for the twenty-first century, as well as a new essay on Debussy and Under the Volcano, Lowry's masterpiece.

In Landscapes of War and Memory: The Two World Wars in Canadian Literature and the Arts, 1977-2007 (University of Alberta Press $31.31), Sherrill Grace uses her knowledge to adopt the role of observer. This comprehensive study of the literature, theatre and art related to memories of both world wars constructs a bridge through history and connects readers with wartime trials and traumas that many Canadians have never experienced.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
On the Art of Being Canadian
Painting the Maple: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Construction of Canada
Landscapes of War and Memory: The Two World Wars in Canadian Literature and the Arts, 1977-2007

MALCOLM LOWRY BOOKS (EDITOR)

Sursum Corda: The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, Vol. I (London: Jonathan Cape, and Toronto: UTP, 1995), 730 pp.
Sursum Corda: The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, Vol. II (London: Jonathan Cape, and Toronto: UTP, 1996) 974 pp, with the assistance of K.Y. Chung.
Satan in a Barrel: Malcolm Lowry's Early Stories. Edited, annotated, with introduction. Edmonton: Juvenilia P, 1999.

BOOKS (AUTHOR)

Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood (Montreal: Véhicule P, 1980) 154 pp. Reprinted pp. 79-86 from Violent Duality in Short Story Criticism (Gale 1989).
The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry's Fiction (Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 1982) 160 pp. (publ. 29 Nov. 1982).
Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) 312 pp.
Canada and the Idea of North. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) 365 pp.
Inventing Tom Thomson: From Biographical Fictions to Fictional Autobiographies and Reproductions (McGill-Queen's, 2004)
Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollack (Talonbooks, 2008). $39.95 978-0-88922-586-2
On the Art of Being Canadian (UBC Press, 2009).
Strange Comfort: Essays on the Work of Malcolm Lowry (Talonbooks, 2009) 978-0-88922-618-0
Landscapes of War and Memory: The Two World Wars in Canadian Literature and the Arts, 1977-2007 (University of Alberta Press 2014) $49.95 978-1-77212-000-4
Tiff: A Life of Timothy Findley (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press 2020) $39.99 9781771124539

OTHER BOOKS (EDITED)
Co-ed. with L. Weir, Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System (Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 1983) 158 pp.
Edited collection (with two contributions), Swinging the Maelstrom: New Perspectives on Malcolm Lowry. Montreal: McGill-Queens U.P., 1992, 270 pages. See nos. 37 and 38. Translation of pages 9-10 in Alberto Gironella: El Via Crucis del Consul (Barcelona 1992): 44-45.
Representing North. A special issue of Essays on Canadian Writing, guest-edited with introduction and one chapter. 59 (Fall 1996). 230 pp.
Painting the Maple. Essays on Race, Gender, and the Construction of Canada, co-edited with V. Strong-Boag, A. Eisenberg, and J. Anderson. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Staging the North: Twelve Canadian Plays, co-edited with L. Chalykoff and E. D'Aeth. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 1999.
Performing National Identities: International Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Theatre, co-edited with Albert-Reiner Glaap. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2003.
Sharon Pollock Three Plays, introductory essay. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2003.
Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice (Talonbooks 2006). With Jerry Wasserman.
Bearing Witness: Perspectives on War and Peace from the Arts and Humanities (McGill-Queens 2012). Edited by Sherrill Grace, Patrick Imbert, and Tiffany Johnstone

[BCBW 2020] "Lowry"