Douglas Durkin



Douglas Leader Durkin (July 9, 1884 - June 4, 1967) was a Canadian poet, novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

Life
Durkin was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, but moved with his family to Swan River, Manitoba, during his youth.

He worked as a professor of English literature at Brandon College and the University of Manitoba between 1911 and 1921, when he moved to New York, leaving behind his wife and children. He taught creative writing briefly at Columbia University before turning to a full-time writing career with fellow-novelist Martha Ostenso.

Durkin and Osteno met at the University of Manitoba where she was his student; shortly after Durkin moved to New York, where Ostenso followed him. It has been suggested that Durkin contributed significantly to Ostenso's first novel, Wild Geese (1925), a fact that was kept secret because Wild Geese won the 1925 Dodd, Mead and Company Best Novel of the Year Award, which could only be awarded to first-time novelists.

Durkin and Ostenso married in 1945, after the death of his first wife, and lived together, first in New York and later in Minnesota, until Ostenso's death in 1963.

In 1958, at the end of their writing careers, Ostenso and Durkin signed a legal agreement stating retroactively that every novel published under the name "Martha Ostenso" had in fact been collaboratively written by Ostenso and Durkin. This may account for why Durkin published only one novel after The Magpie, the darkly humorous Mr. Gumble Sits Up (1930). Durkin did continue to publish short stories under his own name as well as under the pseudonym "Conrad North," a nickname apparently given to him by Ostenso.

Durkin died in Washington, in 1967.

Writing
Durkin is best known for his 1923 novel The Magpie, set during the Winnipeg General Strike and dealing with issues of worker's rights. It is considered a valuable contribution to the emergence of realism in Canada, particularly prairie realism.

Selected bibliography

 * The Fighting Men of Canada (1918)
 * The Heart of Chair McBain (1919)
 * The Lobstick Trail (1921)
 * The Magpie (1923)
 * Mr. Gumble Sits Up (1930)