Line Breaks: A Writing Life

After escaping from his ultra-conservative Montreal family, George Galt found ultimate success as a poet, non-fiction writer, and editor. As much about people as it is about the written word, Line Breaks offers vivid portraits of many of the characters Galt encountered during his literary life, from Al Purdy, Margaret Atwood, and Peter Ustinov to Charles Ritchie, Jan Morris, David Frum, and Pierre Trudeau.

Montréal, PQ: Linda Leith Publishing, 2024
ISBN: 9781773901565
190 pages

What PEOPLE Have Said:

“Charming, astute, witty, and insightful — about making art and culture in Canada, about one journey through the writing life — Line Breaks is foremost about the people one meets, and the person, or persons, one is, over a lifetime. A lovely book about, in effect, books by someone who knows intimately the form, and content, of the writerly heart.” — Charles Foran, author of Mordecai and Just Once, No More

“In Line Breaks, George Galt has given us a thoughtful, eloquent, honest insider’s account of what it meant to be a writer in this country in the last quarter of the twentieth century.” — Joe Kertes, award-winning author of The Afterlife of Stars and Last Impressions

“You’ll meet in these pages everyone from Al Purdy to Margaret Atwood, Peter Ustinov to Jonathan Miller, and David Frum to Robert Stone. Each character — including his parents and George himself —is rendered with a deft touch and a gimlet eye in this astute memoir.” — Gary Ross, former editor, Saturday Night magazine, and founding partner of the publishing house MW&R