Norman Ravvin is a writer, teacher, and critic. His new memoir is Who Gets In: An Immigration Story (University of Regina Press). Based on his grandfather’s emigration from Poland in 1930 and his early years on the Saskatchewan prairie, it tells a private story as well as one about Canada in those years. Using archival research and an ear for Jewish lives in Europe and Canada in the thirties, it provides a fresh view of the period. Ravvin’s recent novel, The Girl Who Stole Everything, is set in contemporary Poland and Vancouver. It was chosen by the Globe & Mail as one of the best books from independent publishers. Previous publications include novels, The Joyful Child and Lola by Night, and the story collection Sex, Skyscrapers and Standard Yiddish. He is co-editor of the Canadian Jewish Studies Reader and Failure’s Opposite: Listening to A.M. Klein. His essays are collected in Hidden Canada: An Intimate Travelogue and A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory. A native of Calgary, he lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Fredericton before settling with his family in Montreal where he teaches at Concordia University.
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