Seán Virgo was born to an Irish family in Mtarfa, Malta in 1940. Educated in South Africa and Nottingham, England, he emigrated in 1966 to teach at UVic until 1970. After living for a year in Connemara, Ireland, he lived with his family on the Queen Charlotte Islands until 1975. Deathwatch on Skidegate Narrows and Other Poems is his retrospective account of what the Pacific Coast and its spirits meant to him; with Susan Musgrave he also collaborated on a limited edition called Kiskatinaw Songs. He moved to Topsail, Newfoundland, partly attracted by its Irish roots and oral culture, but later returned to B.C. His Irish stories appeared in 1983 as Through the Eyes of a Cat, following a first collection, White Lies and Other Fictions. His complex and ambitious first novel is Selakhi.

POETRY:

Pieces for the Old Earth Man (1973)
Island (a collaborative song/verse cycle with cassette) - 1975
Deathwatch On Skidegate Narrows and Other Poems (Sono Nis, 1978)
Kiskatinaw Songs (with Susan Musgrave - 1979)
Dancer (private, limited edition - 1984)
Selected Poems (1990)

FICTION:

White Lies & Other Fictions (1981)
Through The Eyes Of A Cat (1983), reissued with additional stories, 2001
Selakhi, novel (1987)
Wormwood (1989)
White Lies & Other Fictions +2 (1990)
Waking In Eden (1991)
A Traveller Came By, stories about dying (2000)

[BCBW 2003] "Fiction" "Poetry"