The Most Famous

WRITERS from Canada

This page contains a list of the greatest Canadian Writers. The pantheon dataset contains 7,302 Writers, 43 of which were born in Canada. This makes Canada the birth place of the 28th most number of Writers behind Belgium, and Denmark.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Canadian Writers of all time. This list of famous Canadian Writers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Canadian Writers.

1. Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 - 1942)

With an HPI of 68.77, Lucy Maud Montgomery is the most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 50 different languages on wikipedia.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. She published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success; the title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following. Most of the novels were set on Prince Edward Island and those locations within Canada's smallest province became a literary landmark and popular tourist site—namely Green Gables farm, the genesis of Prince Edward Island National Park. Montgomery's work, diaries, and letters have been read and studied by scholars and readers worldwide. The L. M. Montgomery Institute, University of Prince Edward Island, is responsible for the scholarly inquiry into the life, works, culture, and influence of Montgomery.

2. Alice Munro (1931 - 2024)

With an HPI of 68.48, Alice Munro is the 2nd most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 103 different languages.

Alice Ann Munro ( mən-ROH; née Laidlaw LAYD-law; 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024) was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work tends to move forward and backward in time, with integrated short story cycles. Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario. Her stories explore human complexities in a simple but meticulous prose style. Munro received the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her life's work. She was also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, and received the Writers' Trust of Canada's 1996 Marian Engel Award and the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway. She stopped writing around 2013 and died at her home in 2024.

3. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

With an HPI of 67.42, Margaret Atwood is the 3rd most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 75 different languages.

Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born on November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the 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. Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto. She is the inventor of the LongPen device and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents.

4. Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005)

With an HPI of 65.13, Saul Bellow is the 4th most famous Canadian Writer. His biography has been translated into 98 different languages.

Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was an American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age." His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift, and Ravelstein. Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself. Bellow grew up as an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses." Bellow's protagonists wrestle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." This transcendence of the "unutterably dismal" (a phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a "ferocious assimilation of learning" (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility.

5. Brian Tracy (b. 1944)

With an HPI of 60.28, Brian Tracy is the 5th most famous Canadian Writer. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Brian Tracy is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over eighty books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His popular books are Earn What You're Really Worth, Eat That Frog!, No Excuses! The Power of Self-Discipline and The Psychology of Achievement.

6. A. E. van Vogt (1912 - 2000)

With an HPI of 59.81, A. E. van Vogt is the 6th most famous Canadian Writer. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Alfred Elton van Vogt ( VAN VOHT; April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born American science fiction writer. His fragmented, bizarre narrative style influenced later science fiction writers, notably Philip K. Dick. He was one of the most popular and influential practitioners of science fiction in the mid-twentieth century, the genre's so-called Golden Age, and one of the most complex. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995 (presented 1996).

7. David Morrell (b. 1943)

With an HPI of 57.36, David Morrell is the 7th most famous Canadian Writer. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

David Morrell (born April 24, 1943) is a Canadian-American author whose debut 1972 novel First Blood, later adapted as the 1982 film of the same name, went on to spawn the successful Rambo franchise starring Sylvester Stallone. He has written 28 novels, and his work has been translated into 30 languages. He also wrote the 2007–2008 Captain America comic book miniseries The Chosen.

8. Anne Carson (b. 1950)

With an HPI of 53.10, Anne Carson is the 8th most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Anne Patricia Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the United States and Canada since 1979, including McGill, Michigan, NYU, and Princeton. With more than twenty books of writings and translations published to date, Carson was awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, has won the Lannan Literary Award, two Griffin Poetry Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry, and the PEN/Nabokov Award, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for her contribution to Canadian letters.

9. Shulamith Firestone (1945 - 2012)

With an HPI of 52.79, Shulamith Firestone is the 9th most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave feminism and a founding member of three radical-feminist groups: New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Within these radical movements, Firestone became known as "the firebrand" and "the fireball" for the fervor and passion she expressed towards the cause. Firestone participated in activism such as speaking out at The National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. Also while a member of various feminist groups she participated in actions including protesting a Miss America Contest, organizing a mock funeral for womanhood known as "The Burial of Traditional Womanhood", protesting sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden, organizing abortion speakouts, and disrupting abortion legislation meetings. In 1970, Firestone authored The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Published in September of that year, the book became an influential feminist text. The Dialectic of Sex and the ideas presented within it became important in both cyberfeminism and xenofeminism, as her ideas were a precursor for other subjects regarding technology and gender. In her writing career Firestone also helped write and edit a magazine called Notes. Her final written text was Airless Spaces written in 1998, which consisted of short stories all relating to her experience with mental illness and schizophrenia. A documentary called Shulie was created depicting Firestone during her time as a student, and it outlined her journey to becoming a feminist figure and important author. The original documentary featuring Firestone was never released, but a recreation of it was. Firestone struggled with schizophrenia after her retirement from activism and suffered from the illness until her death in 2012.

10. Gabrielle Roy (1909 - 1983)

With an HPI of 51.75, Gabrielle Roy is the 10th most famous Canadian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Gabrielle Roy (French pronunciation: [ɡabʁijɛl ʁwa]; March 22, 1909 – July 13, 1983) was a Canadian author from St. Boniface, Manitoba and one of the major figures in French Canadian literature.

People

Pantheon has 55 people classified as Canadian writers born between 1848 and 1985. Of these 55, 29 (52.73%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Canadian writers include Margaret Atwood, Brian Tracy, and David Morrell. The most famous deceased Canadian writers include Lucy Maud Montgomery, Alice Munro, and Saul Bellow. As of April 2024, 12 new Canadian writers have been added to Pantheon including Mazo de la Roche, Laurence J. Peter, and Émile Nelligan.