Stories About Storytellers, by Douglas Gibson with illustrations by Anthony Jenkins (Copyright © Douglas Gibson, 2011 Published by ECW Press)

[Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Douglas Gibson's new book Stories About Storytellers: Publishing Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau, and Others, running every Friday. The following is from the chapter on Islander, teacher, and inventor of words, Jack Hodgins.]

“Jack Hodgins, he got curly hair” was the first recorded comment by my daughter Meg (aged two) on one of my authors, after Jack had visited the house for dinner. (I remember fondly that at a return engagement at Jack’s house outside Nanaimo, his kids, Shannon, Gavin, and Tyler, kindly took me outside to see their pullets in the yard overhung by arbutus trees.) Jack’s hair was curly then in 1976 and it’s curly now, although it’s less springy, and a purist would notice that it has gone grey. But Jack is still impossibly boyish, lean, and active. And he’s still shy, in a stooping sort of way that allows him to rear back with a sudden smile or a laugh, as the conversation — or the instructive talk about the craft of fiction — demands it. Those who have seen him in action in a classroom know that he is that very rare blend of a shy person who is also a natural teacher.

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