Michael Peterman

Prof. Michael Peterman lives in Peterborough and summers in Nova Scotia. Regardless of location, he writes a fortnightly column for the Peterborough Examiner called "Culture Matters." As professor emeritus (Trent University), he is now quite free to pursue his ongoing research interests in 19th century Canadian writing. His current work includes a scholarly edition of Susanna Moodie’s autobiographical novel, Flora Lyndsay; or Passages in an Eventful Life (1854), published by the University of Ottawa Press in February. He is also at work on a biography of poet-journalist-musician James McCarroll (1814-92), who lived in Peterborough in the 1840s, and a study of John Craig (1921-82), a prolific local writer who often wrote about Peterborough, Lakefield and the Kawarthas. Craig’s extraordinary novel, Chappie and Me (1979) was the subject of the Friday afternoon session in 2014.

As a Trent professor emeritus in English literature, Prof. Peterman is a prolific author and editor with a particular interest in 19th and 20th century Canadian authors. He has devoted significant study to Susanna Moodie and her sister Catharine Parr Traill, who both wrote about their experiences in the backwoods of Ontario in the 1830s.