David Carpenter, professor of English, seated with a copy of his book Banjo Lessons. Carpenter won the City of Edmonton Book Prize for Banjo Lessons (Coteau Books, 1997), a novel in which a young man comes of age in mid-century Alberta.

Bio/Historical Note: David C. Carpenter, born 1941 in Edmonton, Alberta, earned a BA in modern languages (1962) and a BEd (1964) from the University of Alberta. He earned an MA in English (1967) from the University of Oregon and a DPhil from the University of Alberta (1973). Carpenter has served on the faculty of the English Department at the University of Saskatchewan since 1975. His oeuvre, which includes poetry, essays, short stories, novellas, and full-length books in fiction as well as non-fiction genres, focuses primarily on nature and his native western Canada. Works of fiction by Carpenter include Jewels, Jokes for the Apocalypse, and God's Bedfellows. Writing Home and Courting Saskatchewan are books of essays by him. In 2010, A Hunter's Confession, was released, in which he explores the history of hunting, subsistence hunting versus hunting for sport, trophy hunting, and the meaning of the hunt for those who have written about it most eloquently. Carpenter was awarded an honourary Doctor of Literature degree by the U of S in 2018.