I ABSOLUTELY AGREE WITH BARRY Broadfoot. You'd think that more of the names in Words We Call Home (UBC Press) would have national reputations. Writers from Creative Writing's English Department days Lionel Kearns, Daphne Marlatt, Heather Spears, even George Bowering; and after independence-the Dennis Foons, Margaret Hollingsworths, Andreas Schroeders. Even more shocking that as writers they can't earn as much as a single mother with a single child on welfare. That's the writer's lot -as lamentable as Barry B. says. Since 1947, a lot of writers have met in workshops put together in the beginning by Earle Birney -forties fellows like Daryl Duke, Bob Harlow, Norm Klenman; seventies women like Roo Borson, and Linda Svendsen, who was featured in the Atlantic's "Best of the Decade" but remains relatively unknown in Canada. The names leading the workshops, writing their way into poverty, haven't stopped. Like Jack Hodgins, some come over from Education to participate. Good writing in a good manuscript is all that's needed to get in. The door is open, the university takes writing seriously and funds it. It is a pity society won't do the same and pay its writers with the attention and money they deserve. The B.C. BookWorld header should have read: "Barry Broadfoot blasts the current state of affairs for writers in Canada." Add my piece of huff to his, please.

--George McWhirter, head Department of Creative Writing, UBC

[BCBW 1991]