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Who is this frank and thoughtful critic?

• Born and raised in Barbados, he came to Canada in 1955 to study at the University of Toronto. • The first person he ever interviewed for radio was Malcolm X.

• He ran for mayor of Toronto in 1969.

• He titled his 1980 memoir Growing up Stupid Under the Union Jack.

• He won the Giller Prize for fiction in 2002.

• The astute commentator speaking with Anna Cameron is writer Austin Clarke.

• Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke was born on July 26, 1934 in Barbados, and moved to Canada in 1955. After studying politics and economics at the University of Toronto, Clarke started his writing career in 1959 as a cub reporter for the Timmins Daily News. In the 1960s, he worked as a freelance journalist, both in print and for the CBC, and published his first two novels and a collection of short stories. Over the next four decades, Clarke's many works of fiction and non-fiction explored the legacy of colonialism, and the black immigrant experience in Canada.

• Clarke has won several prestigious literary awards, including the Rogers Writers Trust Prize (1998), W.O. Mitchell prize (1999) and a Trillium Book Award (2002). His tenth novel, The Polished Hoe, won the 2002 Giller Prize and a Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2003.

• Clarke is also known for his tireless work as mentor to young writers, and as an activist on issues of race, civil rights and multiculturalism. In 1969 and 1979, he ran for mayor of Toronto, and in 1977 he vied for a seat in provincial parliament under the Ontario Progressive Conservative banner.

• Although Clarke was not interested in applying for Canadian citizenship in this 1963 clip, according to Maclean's, he did become a citizen more than 20 years later, in 1985. He was invested with the Order of Canada in October 1998.


Medium: Television
Program: Take 30
Broadcast Date: May 21, 1963
Guest(s): Austin Clarke
Interviewer: Anna Cameron
Duration: 7:21

Last updated: March 1, 2012

Page consulted on April 3, 2013

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