Michael Turner
Michael Turner (born 1962 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a musician and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos.
Turner's work is often an examination of the entrenched and the seemingly-ordinary; he often explores in great detail objects and concepts which are usually valued as means to an end, rather than ends per se, as he does in Company Town (1991) and Kingsway (1995). Turner often varies his style and employs a rich, multi-format and intertextual approaches in his works, such as American Whiskey Bar (1997), and The Pornographer's Poem (1999).
Turner's work was adapted to radio, stage, television and feature film, and he has been translated into French, Russian, and Korean. He won the Genie Award in 1996 for Music/Original Song, the 1999 BC Book Prize for Fiction and was also a finalist for the 1991 Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize for Poetry. Turner collaborated with artist Stan Douglas on two experimental-video screenplays, titled Journey Into Fear (Istanbul Biennial, 2001) and Suspiria (Documenta XI, 2002) and on a screenplay with filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, titled Untitled Von Gloeden Project, based on the life and work of photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was commissioned to write a libretto for the Modern Baroque Opera Company, based on Wilhelm Busch's Max & Moritz.
Michael Turner lives in Vancouver, writes art essays and edits Advance Editions, a literary/visual art imprint he founded with in 1998. He recently began writing a new book.
Bibliography
Poetry and Fiction
- The Pornographer's Poem (Doubleday Canada, 1999)
- American Whiskey Bar (Arsenal Pulp, 1997)
- Kingsway (Arsenal Pulp, 1995)
- Hard Core Logo (Arsenal Pulp, 1993)
- Company Town (Arsenal Pulp, 1991)
Anthologies
- The Notebooks (Anchor, 2002)
- Story of a Nation (Doubleday, 2001)
- Lost Classics (Knopf, 2000)
References
