This collection features essays on Nova Scotia-born poet, playwright and literary critic George Elliott Clarke, instrumental in promoting the writing of Canadian writers of African descent, has won awards including the Governor General's Award for poetry, a National Magazine Gold Medal Award for Poetry, the prestigious Trudeau Fellowship Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Achievement Award, and The Premiul Poesis (Romania). He has had poetry and plays published in Chinese, Romanian, and Italian while other works have appeared in Korean, Swedish, Finnish, French, German, Polish, and Hungarian. He is also the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. Joseph Pivato is professor of English and Comparative Literature at Athabasca University in Edmonton. His books for Guernica include: Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (1985), Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (1994), The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (1998), and Pier Giorgio Di Cicco.