Over the course of half a century, as radio producer, editor, talent scout, impresario, and anthologist, Robert Weaver nurtured and sustained three generations of writers. Among those he gave their earliest breaks to were Alice Laidlaw (who became Alice Munro), Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley, and Leonard Cohen. This book is an unbuttoned and colourful biography and an extended riff on the development of modern Canadian literature. It will include archival photographs and interviews with Weaver himself and with Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Alistair MacLeod, Barry Callaghan, Robert Fulford, and Janice Kulyk Keefer.

Elaine Kalman Naves is an award-winning author of three books about literary Montreal: The Writers of Montreal, Putting Down Roots: Montreal's Immigrant Writers, and, with Bryan Demchinsky, Storied Streets: Montreal in the Literary Imagination. Her two family memoirs, Journey to Vaja and Shoshanna's Story, have won critical praise and many prizes.

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