David Gilmour

David Gilmour, novelist, film critic, journalist (born at London, Ont 22 December 1949). David Gilmour grew up in Toronto, where he attended Upper Canada College. He did his undergraduate degree in French Literature at the University of Toronto and the University of Toulouse. He began graduate studies in Comparative Literature of the University of Toronto, and completed a Bachelor of Education. He then worked for the Toronto Film Festival, becoming its managing editor in 1980. Gilmour has achieved recognition and acclaim for both his journalism and fiction.

Gilmour's career in broadcasting began after a television producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation read and enjoyed Gilmour's first published novel, Back on Tuesday (1986), and subsequently invited him to audition as a film critic, a role through which Gilmour became well known to CBC viewers across Canada. He later hosted his own show, Gilmour on the Arts, which won a Gemini Award in 1997.

While establishing himself as a prominent arts journalist, Gilmour continued to write novels. His concise style is laced with humour, even while he is observing the darker sides of human nature. How Boys See Girls, Gilmour's second novel, was published in 1991. This book, which centres on an older man's obsessive lust for a younger woman, was better received in the United States than in Canada. In An Affair with the Moon (1993), he explores an alcoholic friendship that spins out of control. Lost Between Houses (1999) was a Canadian bestseller and was nominated for the Trillium Book Award. Reviewers compared his portrayal here of teenage angst to J. D. Salinger's classic The Catcher in the Rye. In Sparrow Nights (2001), Gilmour charts his anti-hero protagonist's descent into murder.

His 2005 A Perfect Night to Go to China is markedly different in tone and content from his earlier work. Here, Gilmour mines one of the most horrific of personal tragedies - the abduction and loss of a child. Critics describe his rendition of this dark tale as exhilarating, unexpectedly entertaining, and "compulsively readable." This highly acclaimed novel won the 2005 Governor General's Literary Award.