Roy MacSkimming is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 novelist, non-fiction writer and cultural policy consultant.

Born in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 and educated at the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

, MacSkimming broke into book publishing in 1964 at Clarke, Irwin and later co-founded New Press, one of Canada’s leading small presses of the 1970s. He has been books editor and literary columnist at The Toronto Star, and has contributed to a number of newspapers and periodicals, including The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

, The Ottawa Citizen, Maclean's

Maclean's

Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...

and Saturday Night

Saturday Night (magazine)

Saturday Night was a Canadian general interest magazine. It was founded in Toronto, Ontario in 1887.The publication was first established as a weekly broadsheet newspaper about public affairs and the arts, which was later expanded into a general interest magazine. The editor, Edmund E. Sheppard,...

. MacSkimming has served as publishing officer with the Canada Council for the Arts, and policy director of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

MacSkimming has written two novels with European settings: Formentera (1972), set in the Balearic Islands

Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...

, and Out of Love (1993), set in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 and Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

. He has also written Gordie: A Hockey Legend (1994), an unauthorized biography of Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe

Gordon "Gordie" Howe, OC is a Canadian retired professional ice hockey player who played for the Detroit Red Wings and Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League , and the Houston Aeros and New England Whalers in the World Hockey Association . Howe is often referred to as Mr...

; and Cold War (1996), a reassessment of the 1972 Canada-Soviet hockey series

Summit Series

The Summit Series was the first competition between the Soviet and an NHL-inclusive Canadian national ice hockey teams, an eight-game series held in September 1972...

.

MacSkimming draws on his professional lifetime in and around the publishing industry in The Perilous Trade: Publishing Canada's Writers (2003). The title was nominated for the National Business Book Award, and was a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year. It was reissued by McClelland & Stewart in an updated paperback edition in 2007.

MacSkimming's third novel, Macdonald, based on the final days of Canada’s founding prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald

John A. Macdonald

Sir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, PC , QC was the first Prime Minister of Canada. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, his political career spanned almost half a century...

, was published in 2007. His most recent novel is Laurier in Love (2010), based on the tangled love life of Canadian prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Wilfrid Laurier

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, GCMG, PC, KC, baptized Henri-Charles-Wilfrid Laurier was the seventh Prime Minister of Canada from 11 July 1896 to 6 October 1911....

.

MacSkimming lives near Perth, Ontario

Perth, Ontario

Perth is a town in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario, Canada . It is located on the Tay River, 83 km southwest of Ottawa, and is the seat of Lanark County.-History:...

.

Poetry

• Shoot Low, Sheriff, They're Riding Shetland Ponies (with William Hawkins
  William Hawkins (songwriter and poet)
  William Alfred Hawkins is a songwriter, poet, musician and journalist, most notable for his contributions in the 1960s to Canadian folk rock music and to Canadian poetry...
  
  ). Independent, 1964

Novels

• Formentera. Toronto: New Press, 1972
• Out of Love. Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant Books, 1993
• Macdonald. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2007
• Laurier in Love. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2010

Non-Fiction

• On Your Own Again Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992. (with Keith Anderson)
• Gordie: An Unauthorized Biography of Gordie Howe. Vancouver: Greystone, 1994, 2003.
• Cold War: The Amazing Canada-Soviet Hockey Series of 1972. Vancouver: Greystone, 1996.
• The Perilous Trade: Publishing Canada’s Writers. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 2003, 2007.

Awards

• Finalist, National Magazine Awards, 1996
• Finalist, Ottawa-Carleton Book Award, 1996 - Cold War
• Janice E. Handford Small Press Award for contributions to Canadian book publishing, 1998
• Globe and Mail 100 Notable Books of the Year, 2003 - The Perilous Trade
• Finalist, National Business Book Award, 2003 - The Perilous Trade