Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor graduated from Carleton with a BA in 1976, and since 1995, when he was Carleton University Writer in Residence, he has been in the English Department. He has lectured in 20th Century Literature, taught the Writing and Language First Year Seminar, and the Fiction Workshop. A few years ago he introduced the Creative Nonfiction Workshop. For 8 years he has taught a Carleton EMCP writing workshop for Ottawa high school students, ‘Write by the River’. In 2014 he was a finalist for a Capital Educators’ Award.

For 23 years he has taught over 125 private writing workshops in Ottawa, Hong Kong, Australia and Tuscany. For 9 years he has offered his ‘Write by the Lake’ writers’ retreat at his beautiful Quebec lake house. In the winter of 2015 he will offer his ‘Write by the Sea’ writing workshop in Byron Bay Australia. Hundreds of Taylor’s writing students have published their work as a result of taking his workshops.

Along with publishing many feature articles and stories in literary magazines, anthologies and newspapers, he has published a collection of short stories Tender Only to One, a novel Cartoon Woods and an Australian travel memoir House Inside the Waves: Domesticity, Art and the Surfing Life. He narrated a powerful 2008 documentary film The Man Who Crossed the Sahara, about his best friend, surfer and legendary Ottawa filmmaker, Frank Cole, who was murdered while crossing the Sahara Desert. In 2009 he contributed a long memoir Saltwater Road to the Sahara, for Life Without Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole. While surfing and open water swimming around the world, he is writing a book about swimming with writers, Water and Desire. He is also mounting a multimedia art gallery show Writer’s Block: 40 Wood Sculptures and Their Stories.