Kevin Patterson
Kevin Patterson
Kevin Pattersonis a Canadian medical doctor and writer. His short story collection, Country of Cold, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2003. His latest book, Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of its Participants, published in 2008, is a collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 December 1964
CountryCanada
Kevin Patterson quotes about
both fiction lawrence mark novels opened power whom
Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.
bit call cram nights quiet time wherever work
I work on quiet call nights in the hospital, on airplanes and on my sailboat when I have a bit of time - I cram it into wherever it will fit.
affinity bay both change coast comfort hudson land moved pace seeing since social time ways west worked
I've worked in the Inuit hamlets of the west coast of Hudson Bay since 1994. Over that time I've been very moved by both the pace of social change there - the loss of traditional ways of seeing the world, the affinity for and comfort with the land - and by the social disarray that change of this pace produces.
arctic both certain clear dominant grandeur particular people
I like a certain grandeur to a landscape, which both the Arctic and coastal BC have. I like it to be at all times clear that people aren't the dominant fact of a particular geography.
courage cowardice easier enter fear interested
Because at bottom, I'm interested in fear, and in courage and cowardice and these are easier to get at through fiction, where you can enter people's heads.
alongside exist
Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are indifferent to words and description and dissection.
canadian-writer loves maverick wants
The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion.
awareness canadian-writer otherwise pleasures
Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.
continue cut fashion recipe strategic
We cut here, we cut there, but it's not done in a strategic fashion. We can't continue to gnaw away at the core. That's a recipe for disaster.
both curriculum fact offered school sure talk
Sometimes we talk about how culturally we feel comfortable in a school, but there's also the fact we need to make sure the curriculum offered there is challenging. You have to have both to make the school successful.
decided
Right now, we have a vote. We haven't decided to reconsider it.
campaign decided message trying validate ways
This is fantastic. It really does validate what we decided to do with the campaign this year, trying different ways to get the message out.