Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity

Award-winning author Gary Barwin has written poems, novels and books for children. He’s composed music, created multimedia art and performed around the world. Now he has turned his talented pen to essays. In Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity Barwin thinks deeply about big ideas: story and identity; art and death; how we communicate and why we dream. From his childhood home in Ireland to his long-time home in Hamilton, Barwin shares the thoughts that keep him up at night (literally) and the ideas that keep him creating. Filled with witty asides, wise stories and a generosity of spirit that is unmistakable, these are essays that readers will turn to again and again.

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of thirty books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Vine Award and was chosen for Hamilton Reads 2023. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was long-listed for Canada Reads. His 2022 poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures, won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Barwin was born in Northern Ireland of South African parents of Ashkenazi Lithuanian descent. He currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario, and at garybarwin.com.