Zinovich, Jordan 1955- (Jordan Samuel Zinovich)

PERSONAL:

Born February 4, 1955, in Kimberly, British Columbia, Canada; immigrated to the United States, 1981; son of George and Dale Lenore Zinovich; married Adele Joan Haft, October 28, 1985. Education: City University of New York, B.A., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY.

CAREER:

Writer; Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY, senior editor. Writer in residence at Banff Centre, 1991, and Culturelle Vrijplatz Ruigoord, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from Canada Council and Alberta Historical Resources Foundation.

WRITINGS:

(With Ted Nagle) The Prospector: North of Sixty (biography), Lone Pine Publishing (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 1989.

Battling the Bay: The Turn-of-the-Century Adventures of Fur Trader Ed Nagle, Lone Pine Publishing (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 1991.

(Editor) Canadas: Kanaki (anthology; includes text in French and Inuktitut; also published as an issue of the periodical semiotext(e)), Marginal Editions (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Gabriel Dumont in Paris: A Novel History, University of Alberta Press (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), 1999.

Cobweb Walking (poetry), Artichoke Yink Press (Brooklyn, NY), 2003.

The Company I Keep (poetry), Ekstasis Editions (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 2004.

John Chapman's Harvest (poetic radio play), broadcast in 2004.

Contributor to literary journals, including semiotext(e), New Observations, Pacific Rim Review of Books, and Jack.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jordan Zinovich explores historical and cultural issues in his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Born in western Canada, he lived in England, France, Spain, Crete, the Netherlands, and India before moving to New York City, but much of his work relates to Canadian themes. His first two books are biographies about men who explored Canada's northwest regions, and Gabriel Dumont in Paris: A Novel History, presents the life and times of the nineteenth-century Métis leader who instigated the Northwest Rebellion after the Canadian government betrayed its commitments to the indigenous peoples of the region. Reviewer Guy Vanderhaeghe reviewed the book in Canadian Forum, pointing out that although Zinovich may have mistaken a tongue-in-cheek source as accurate, he nevertheless presents an effective historical novel that "achieves a rich evocation of a time and a people."

Zinovich also received critical notice for editing the anthology Canadas: Kanaki, which focuses, according to Canadian Forum reviewer Matthew Manera, on the concerns of Canadians who are often marginalized. Such issues as gender identity, ecological dissent, and aboriginal concerns feature prominently in the book, which Manera considers an argument for the position that "we are all, to some degree, ‘colonized,’ that is, dominated and/or alienated, by our governments."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Forum, April, 1995, Matthew Manera, review of Canadas: Kanaki, pp. 45-46; December 1999, Guy Vanderhaeghe, review of Gabriel Dumont in Paris: A Novel History, pp. 46-47.