Shortlisted for the Kerry Schooley Award — Hamilton Literary Awards

Shortlisted for the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Award for Non-fiction

This House is Condemned is equal parts elegy, portraiture and exploration of a life lived at the edge of Lake Ontario. In spare, moving prose David Haskins writes essays of immigrating to Canada and building his life as a teacher and writer. Currents of poetry run through the book, which is as touched with humour as it is with sadness. He writes of indestructible garden forks, rafts that bear him away unexpectedly and of the love that ebbs and flows throughout a life. This House is Condemned is a rich collection that picks the reader up and places them beside the author, walking along the shores of the lake.

David Haskins wanted to write ever since Enid Blyton sent him a handwritten postcard when he was seven. He also wanted to become a veterinary surgeon. He settled for mentorships under CanLit’s A-listers Joe Rosenblatt, Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, John Herbert, P.K. Page and others, and a career teaching English to high schoolers. His poetry books, Reclamation (Borealis, 1980) and Blood Rises (Guernica, 2020), and his literary memoir This House is Condemned (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013) top a long list of published works that have won first place awards from the CBC, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Canadian Authors Association, gritLIT and Arts Hamilton. He continues to live in the family home in Grimsby, Ontario.

David Haskins' profile page