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Mark Abley (born 13 May 1955) is a Canadian poet,journalist,editor and nonfiction writer. His poetry and some of his nonfiction books express his interest in endangered languages. In November 2022 Abley was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by theUniversity of Saskatchewan for his writing career and for his services to Canadian literature.
ARhodes Scholar, Abley settled inMontreal in 1983, where he lived until 2024. His memoir of his father,The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, appeared in 2019. It was followed by a work of literary travel,Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail (2023). In 2024 he moved toGananoque, Ontario.
Born inWarwickshire, England, Mark Abley moved to Canada with his family as a small boy, and grew up inLethbridge,Alberta andSaskatoon,Saskatchewan.[1] His father Harry was anorganist who played in churches and cinemas; he also taught the pipe organ. His father's struggle with depressive illness is a major theme of Abley's memoir of his father,The Organist (2019).[2]
Abley attended theUniversity of Saskatchewan, from which he won aRhodes Scholarship in 1975. He won prizes for his poetry while a student atSt John's College, Oxford, and began to write full-time after returning to Canada and moving toToronto in 1978. He was a contributing editor of bothMaclean's andSaturday Night magazines, and a frequent contributor toThe Times Literary Supplement.
As a young man Abley was a freelance writer and broadcaster. For sixteen years he worked as a feature writer and book-review editor at theMontreal Gazette. In 1996 he won Canada'sNational Newspaper Award for critical writing; he was previously shortlisted for the award in 1992 in the category of international reporting for a series of articles about theHorn of Africa. He returned to freelance writing in 2003, though he continued to write the "Watchwords" columns on language issues for theGazette. Between 2009 and 2020 he worked atMcGill-Queen's University Press as an acquisition editor. He served as the first writer-in-residence for the city ofPointe-Claire in 2010–11.
He has written four books of poetry, two children's books, and several non-fiction books.Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages (2003)[3] describes people and cultures whose languages are at risk of vanishing in an era ofglobalization. It was short-listed for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal and the Pearson Writers' Trust Nonfiction Prize. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese and Latvian. In 2009, thanks to the Spanish translation, Abley was awarded the LiberPress Prize for international authors inGirona, Catalonia.
Abley has given talks atOxford University,College of the Holy Cross,Ohio State University,McGill University,Queen's University, theUniversity of Toronto and elsewhere. He delivered the annual Priestly Lecture at theUniversity of Lethbridge, gave the opening address to a conference of the Association of American University Presses, and spoke in a Festival of Landscape atMagdalene College, Cambridge.
In 2005 he was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship for research into language change. His bookThe Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English (2008) was positively reviewed inThe Times (London) and byWilliam Safire inThe New York Times. In August 2009 Abley published a children's book about words and their origins,Camp Fossil Eyes. He has also written the text of a picture book for young children,Ghost Cat.
Abley has edited several books, includingWhen Earth Leaps Up andA Woman Clothed in Words byAnne Szumigalski; he was Szumigalski's literary executor. Over the years he has led workshops for the Quebec Writers' Federation, the Maritime Writers' Workshop, and theBanff Centre for the Arts. His magazine journalism has appeared inThe Walrus,Canadian Geographic,Canada's History and many other publications. He has been shortlisted for the President's Medal at theNational Magazine Awards.
In 2013, Abley publishedConversations with a Dead Man: The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott.Scott was a poet who also ran theDepartment of Indian Affairs for many years. It received high praise fromBob Rae andCindy Blackstock among others. A revised and updated edition was published by Stonehewer Books in 2024.
Coteau Books publishedThe Tongues of Earth, a volume of Abley's new and selected poems, in 2015. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Fred Cogswell Award for literary excellence.The Organist was named by BBC Music Magazine as one of the top ten classical music books of 2019. "Strange Bewildering Time" was shortlisted for a 2024 Foreword Indies Prize in the biography category.
Mark Abley's literary papers are held atConcordia University.
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