Winnipeg Book Launch: Literary Impostors

McNally-Robinson (Winnipeg), Grant Park Mall, 1120 Grant Avenue - Unit 4000, Winnipeg, MB
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Join Rosmarin Heidenreich for the launch of her new book, Literary Impostors: Canadian Autofiction of the Early Twentieth Century at McNally Robinson Books in Winnipeg, MB.

About the Book

In Literary Impostors, Rosmarin Heidenreich tells the intriguing stories, both the "true" and the fabricated versions, of six Canadian authors who obliterated their pasts and re-invented themselves: Grey Owl was in fact an Englishman named Archie Belaney; Will James, the cowboy writer from the American West, was the Quebec-born francophone Ernest Dufault; the prairie novelist Frederick Philip Grove turned out to be the German writer and translator Felix Paul Greve. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, Onoto Watanna, and Sui Sin Far were the chosen identities of three mixed-race writers whose given names were, respectively, Sylvester Long, Winnifred Eaton, and Edith Eaton. Heidenreich argues that their imposture, in some cases not discovered until long after their deaths, was not fraudulent in the usual sense: these writers forged new identities to become who they felt they really were.

Rosmarin Heidenreich is professor emerita at the Université de Saint-Boniface.

"Rosmarin Heidenreich treats the subjects of 'literary imposters' and autofiction with great understanding and knowledge, making them comprehensible and captivating to the reader. This is a wonderful book that examines its characters with great insight. A considerable advancement." Diana Birchall, author of Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton