28 Canadian literary critics

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, as well as a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including the Booker Prize (twice), Arthur C. Clarke Award, Governor General's Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.

Gary Norman Arthur Botting is a Canadian legal scholar and criminal defense lawyer as well as a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic of literature and religion, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses. The author of 40 published books, he is one of the country's leading authorities on extradition law. He is said to have had "more experience in battling the extradition system than any other Canadian lawyer."

Herménégilde Chiasson is a Canadian poet, playwright and visual artist of Acadian origin. Born in Saint-Simon, New Brunswick, he was the 29th Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick between 2003 and 2009. He is also currently a professor at Université de Moncton.

George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions, its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".

John Frederick Clute is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history" and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of sf in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known." He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982.

William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", an unfashionable term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.

Monique Deland is a Quebec educator, journalist and poet.

Fernand Dorais was a Canadian writer, Jesuit priest and academic. A professor of French literature and translation at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario from 1969 to 1993, he was noted for his work as a key builder of Franco-Ontarian cultural identity, through both his academic research and his role in the development of many of the Franco-Ontarian community's contemporary cultural institutions.

Joseph Leon Edel was an American literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel.

Oscar Pelham Edgar was a Canadian teacher. He was a full professor and head of the Department of English at the Victoria College, Toronto from 1910 to 1938. He wrote many articles and several monographs on English literature. He had a talent for identifying and encouraging promising new authors. He was an active member of various literary societies, and was the force behind the establishment of the Canadian Writers’ Foundation to help needy authors.

Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Schuyler Lee (Sky) Gilbert Jr. is a Canadian writer, actor, academic and drag performer. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, he studied theatre at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and at the University of Toronto, before becoming the co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times, a Toronto theatre company dedicated to LGBT drama. His drag name is Jane. Gilbert also teaches a course on playwrighting at the University of Guelph.

William George Hardy was a Canadian professor, writer, and ice hockey administrator. He lectured on the Classics at the University of Alberta from 1922 to 1964, and served as president of the Canadian Authors Association. He was an administrator of Canadian and international ice hockey, and served as president of the Alberta Amateur Hockey Association, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA), the International Ice Hockey Association, and the International Ice Hockey Federation.

John Hugh MacLennan was a Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award.

Alberto Manguel is an Argentine-Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, editor, and a former Director of the National Library of Argentina. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading (1996), The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novels were written in Spanish, and El regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also written film criticism such as Bride of Frankenstein (1997) and collections of essays such as Into the Looking Glass Wood (1998). In 2007, Manguel was selected to be that year's annual lecturer for the prestigious Massey Lectures.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher, whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the US and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life.

John Wesley Metcalf, CM is an English-born Canadian writer, editor and critic.

Pierre Nepveu is an important French Canadian poet, novelist and essayist. As a scholar, he specializes in modern Quebec poetry, in particular the work of Gaston Miron. He taught at the French Studies Department of Université de Montréal from 1979 until his retirement in 2009.

Isabel Paterson was a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary and cultural critic of her day. Historian Jim Powell has called Paterson one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism, along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson. Paterson's best-known work, The God of the Machine (1943), a treatise on political philosophy, economics, and history, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many libertarians credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her biographer Stephen D. Cox (2004) believes Paterson was the "earliest progenitor of libertarianism as we know it today." In a letter of 1943, Rand wrote that "The God of the Machine is a document that could literally save the world ... The God of the Machine does for capitalism what Das Kapital does for the Reds and what the Bible did for Christianity."

Dr. Penny Serafina Petrone was a Canadian writer, educator, patron of the arts, and philanthropist.

Geoff Pevere is a Canadian lecturer, author, broadcaster, teacher, arts and media critic, and currently the Program Director with the Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival in Toronto. He is a former film critic, book columnist and cultural journalist for the Toronto Star, where he worked from 1998 to 2011. His writing has appeared in several newspapers, magazines and arts journals, and he has worked as a broadcaster for both radio and television. He has lectured widely on cultural and media topics, and taught courses at several Canadian universities and colleges. In 2012, he contributed weekly pop culture columns to CBC Radio Syndication, which were heard in nearly twenty markets across Canada. He has also been a movie columnist and regular freelance contributor with the Globe and Mail.

David G. Roskies is an internationally recognized literary scholar, cultural historian and author in the field of Yiddish literature and the culture of Eastern European Jewry. He is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and Professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Camille Roy was a Canadian priest and literary critic. He wrote extensively about the development of French-Canadian literature, and its importance in the promotion of French language and culture and of Christian ideals.

Paul G. Socken is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and a leading scholar on the work of French-Canadian author Gabrielle Roy. He is also the founder of the department of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo.

Peter Swirski is a Canadian scholar and literary critic featured in Canadian Who's Who. As a specialist in American literature and American Studies, he is the author of many books, including the prize-winning Ars Americana, Ars Politica (2010) and the staple of American popular culture studies From Lowbrow to Nobrow (2005). His other studies include American Utopia and Social Engineering (2011), American Political Fictions (2015), American Utopia: Literature, Society, and the Human Use of Human Beings, and the digital-futurological bestseller From Literature to Biterature (2013). He is also the leading scholar on the late writer and philosopher Stanisław Lem.

Joan Thomas is a Canadian novelist and book reviewer from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Stephen Vizinczey, originally István Vizinczey, is an author and writer.

Susan Joan Wood was a Canadian literary critic, professor, author and science fiction fan and editor. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario.