Member of the Order of Canada
Awarded on: 2010-11-16
Invested on: 2011-09-16
For decades, Christopher Wiseman has nurtured Alberta's emerging and established writers. A former professor, he founded the creative writing program at the University of Calgary. While there, he was one of the first to introduce the workshop model for teaching this subject at the university level, which has now become the standard classroom technique. As a poet, short fiction and scholarly writer, he is the author of many books and has served on the juries for many writing competitions. As well, he was a board member of the Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts, and was founding vice-president and, later, president of the Writers Guild of Alberta.