David Helwig: curriculum vitae

Cover | Published works: [2000-] [1968-99] | curriculum vitae | recent poems | other media | excerpts | Tom Marshall

Curriculum vitae

David Helwig, recent photo

Books:

Books Edited:

 

young David Helwig

David Helwig was born in Toronto in 1938 and lived there for most of his first ten years, then moved with his parents to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario where his father ran a small business repairing and refinishing furniture and buying and selling antiques. He attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first daughter was born in England and the second in Kingston where he taught at Queen's University. He published his first stories, in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer, while still an undergraduate. For two summers he worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, working with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs, William B. Davis and Timothy Findley.

While he taught at Queen's University, he did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentary and he wrote A Book about Billie with a former inmate. In 1974, John Hirsch hired him as literary manager of CBC television drama, and he spent two years in this position, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers. From 1976 to 1980, he taught part time at Queen's while doing a great deal of freelance work, and in 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer.

He has written both fiction and poetry as well as a wide range of radio, television and journalism.

One of his daughters is a writer, social activist, and Anglican priest. The other is a chemist and art conservator. He has three grandchildren.

Vocal music was for many years his avocation. After abandoning this for some years, he returned to it in his forties and sang with a number of choirs in Kingston, Montreal and Charlottetown. He appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion, and Mozart's Requiem.