Chris Scott (writer)

Chris Scott (born 1945 in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England)[1] is an English-Canadian writer. His novel Antichthon was a nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 1982 Governor General's Awards,[2] and his novel Jack won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 1989. His novel, Bartleby was republished in Glasgow in 2016.[3]

Educated at the University of Hull, Manchester University, Scott has taught at York University in Toronto and Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.[4] He became a Canadian citizen in 1975,[1] and resided on a farm in Lanark County, Ontario during much of his writing career.[3]

He is noted for his mixture of genre literature with experimental fiction; Antichthon, for example, applied the format and tropes of a contemporary spy novel to a historical retelling of the 1593 heresy trial of Giordano Bruno,[5] and Jack took as its premise that Thomas Neill Cream, a Scottish-Canadian doctor and murderer, was the real Jack the Ripper.[1][4]

He has also been a contributor to CBC Radio and a book reviewer for Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and the Toronto Star.[4]