Burnham, Clint 1962-

PERSONAL:

Born 1962. Education: University of Victoria, Canada, B.A., M.A.; York University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Office—Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, 1399 Johnston St., Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia V6H 3R9, Canada. E-mail—cburnham@eciad.ca.

CAREER:

Writer, educator, art critic, and artist. Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, faculty member, 1997—; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1999-2002, faculty member. Exhibitions: "Cop Puppet," Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 23-November 20, 1999.

WRITINGS:

The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1995.

Be Labour Reading (poetry), ECW Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.

Airborne Photo: Stories, Anvil Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1999.

Buddyland (poetry), Coach House Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

Smoke Show: A Novel, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2005.

Contributor to art catalogs, including Mina Totino, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1996; Joes I Know/Junior General Kit; Up & Down: Downtown Eastside Architecture; and Vancouver Art & Economies. Contributor to periodicals, including Canadian Art, Flash Art, Open Letter, and English Studies in Canada. Freelance art critic for the Vancouver Sun.

SIDELIGHTS:

A fiction writer and poet, Clint Burnham is also an art critic whose first book, The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory, focuses on the writings of Fredric Jameson, an art critic and Marxist. In the process, the author also reflects on his own life and how it has affected him as an art critic. Writing in Contemporary Literature, Douglas Mao commented that the book "grounds itself in the autobiography of a young man of working-class origins who discovers high culture and theory and now feels disconnected from the milieu of his childhood and parents."

Airborne Photo: Stories features short stories focusing on the underbelly of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the people who live there as they struggle to survive. "Airborne Photo is an unsettling, diamond-sharp book," wrote a This Magazine contributor.

Burnham presents a story of lost souls and losers in Smoke Show: A Novel. Employing a stripped-down narrative, Burnham tells the story of disaffected, young Canadians through a series of conversations. Noting that the novel "takes us into the living rooms of struggling yet apathetic young Vancouverite couples in desperate need of direction," Manitoban Online contributor Michael-Oliver Harding went on to write: "Smoke Show makes a strong case suggesting a very dispiriting future for these characters. Their incapacity to follow through on actions or defend deep-rooted opinions make up the core of this book." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "Burnham is pitch-perfect all the way through."