Elspeth Cameron has written biographies of Canadian literary giants Hugh MacLennan, Irving Layton, and Earle Birney. Hugh MacLennan: A Writer’s Life was hailed as the first full-length biography of a Canadian writer, short-listed for the Governor-General’s Award, and won the U.B.C. Canadian Biography Award. She has also written several other books including the memoir No Previous Experience. Cameron headed one of the first Canadian Studies programs in Canada at Loyola College (Concordia) in 1970. “No one would let me write a PhD thesis on a Canadian writer at U of T in 1965,” she says. “They told me that there wasn’t enough Canadian writing of any importance and that I would not get a job in that field.” She lives in St. Catharines, Ontario.