Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, Rob McLennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with the poet and book conservator Christine McNair. The author of more than forty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the CAA/Most Promising Writer in Canada under 30 Award in 1999, the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. He has published books with Talonbooks, The Mercury Press, Black Moss Press, New Star Books, Insomniac Press, Broken Jaw Press, Stride, Salmon Publishing, University of Calgary Press, University of Alberta Press, Spuyten Duyvil and others, and his most recent titles include Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), a river runs through it: a writing diary (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). Later this year sees the publication of the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press), his follow-up to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). @rob_mclennan_writer
You born and raised in Ontario. How did it lay the groundwork for your creative life? I was born in Ottawa, but raised on a dairy farm in Eastern Ontario. Growing up on a farm provided an example of community thinking everyone helped each other, whether assisting with harvest, plowing driveways in the winter or repairing machinery. Everyone helps each other, and this is how I've always approached literary activity, whether writing, organizing events or publishing, working hard to participate in an ecosystem far more expansive than purely my own, individual work.
What kind of reader were you as a child? What books made you fall in love with reading as a child? I was constantly going through books, and our household was filled with them. Most of my reading was self-directed, so I simply moved through the books on our shelves, or at the school library, or at my grandmother's house. I recall going through my elder cousins' bookshelves, catching Pippi Longstocking, Dr. Dolittle and Cheaper by the Dozen, as well as their collection of Classics Illustrated. It wasn't until I started reading novels by local author Ralph Connor, from a century earlier, did I start to understand that it was possible to write, even if one was from such a rural corner, far away from contemporary literature.
When you're focused on writing, how does your day usually unfold?
Once our young ladies are delivered to school, I am at my desk until it is time for school pick-up. I sit at my desk, working multiple projects simultaneously. Some afternoons, if I require longhand or editing time, I will sit an hour or two at a terrible sportsbar near my middle daughter's school, until I collect her. I sit in the corner with notebook and pen, manuscripts and other reading material. I've been working this way for years.
Can you share how your writing evolves from idea to finished draft?I'm currently working the ends of a creative non-fiction project, "the green notebook," attempting to smooth out some of the last bit of the manuscript. For a whole calendar year, April to April, I worked to add daily entries akin to a kind of writing journal, offering short essay-bursts on what I was reading, what the kids were up to, and what I was working on, focusing on elements of my short fiction.
Do you keep a journal or notebook? If so, what’s in it? I do keep a spiral-bound notebook, the cheap kind I would have also held while in high school. I use this for first drafts and other random note-sketches, from poems to fiction to essays to reviews.
How do you research and what role does research play in your writing? I tend to research pretty heavily when I do, and have been doing such as part of a non-fiction project I've been more than two years working on, attempting to counterpoint the two sides of my genealogical self: my adopted-self, and my more recently-discovered biological self. I am no less one with the new information presented by the other, and wish to understand both sides better. I've spent whole days sitting in archives, attempting to piece together small scraps of information into larger narratives. Otherwise, I tend to allow for the accident, to see what moment of information presents itself, to see how it might fit into the particular work I'm attempting.
What writer’s mind would you love to explore over a long conversation? Oh, that's a curious question. I think Anne Carson would be interesting to engage with, although I suspect she is rather cagey, cards played close to the chest. I would certainly love to spend time with
Dany Laferrière. I met him once, during my twenties, but was too intimidated to interact.
Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines? I keep a constant YouTube flow going on in the background anytime I am at my desk. The past few years have held a lot of Brian Eno, Sigur Ros, Daughter, etc.
How has your view of writing changed with the rise of AI? What are your reflections on the future of storytelling? And why is it important that humans remain at the center of the creative process? As I've seen somewhere else, said by another I don't need AI to do my creative work, I need AI to do my laundry, dishes and housecleaning, to allow me the attention to further my creative work.
Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time. Right now I am very much enjoying Kyo Lee's i cut my tongue on a broken country (Arsenal Pulp, 2025), Maggie Nelson's Pathemata, or, The Story of My Mouth (Wave Books, 2025) and isaiah a. hines' Anything With Spirit (Roof Books, 2025). Last night I heard Kingston-based writer Otoniya J. Okot Bitek read from her We, The Kindling (Knopf, 2025), which was pretty cool. I review pretty heavily, so I am constantly going through new material.
Exploring literature, the arts, and the creative process connects me to… empathy, experience and deeper human comprehension. It connects me to better thinking.
