Kent Thompson

1936-2021

Kent Elgin Thompson (author, editor, poet, playwright, and director) was born 3 February 1936 in Waukegan, Illinois. In 1949, his family moved from Waukegan to Washington Country, Indiana. Thompson received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hanover College in Indiana and earned his master’s degree at the State University of Iowa’s Writers' Workshop. Upon completion of his degree, he taught at Ripon College in Wisconsin. He then attended the University of Wales at Swansea and earned his PhD in literature. After completing his PhD, he taught at the Colorado Women’s College in Denver for one year, then moved to Fredericton in 1966 to teach creative writing and theatre at the University of New Brunswick (UNB). Thompson is former editor of The Fiddlehead. He has written several stage and radio plays for the CBC, including A Passion for Young Girls, The Menu, Fat Woman and Sister, Victoria’s Return, King Humley’s First Game, and Father of a Famous Son. The first two novels that Thompson published were The Tenants Were Corrie and Tennie (1973) and Across From the Floral Park (1974). His other novels include Playing in the Dark (1990), Leading Up, Sliding Away (1986), Married Love: A Vulgar Entertainment (1988), and Shacking Up (1980), originally titled Living in a Motel at the Edge of Town. Thompson also published a series of poems under the title A Band of My Ancestors (1975) and a collection of nine short stories, Shotgun and Other Stories (1979). In 1993, he wrote Biking to Blissville: A Cycling Guide to the Maritimes and the Magdalen Islands (1993). In 1988-1989, he was writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library. In 2002, Thompson won the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction for Getting Out of Town by Book & Bike (2001). When Thompson retired from UNB in the early 1990s, he moved to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia where he wrote The Man Who Said No (2008). Thompson has written and directed two new plays, 5 Stabs in the Governor and Washing Soldiers 1797, both of which are about Annapolis Royal History.  He died 13th of August 2021 in Annapolis Royal.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Fredericton