Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
W. D. Valgardson fonds
General material designation
- Textual record
- Graphic material
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Level of description
Fonds
Repository
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Edition area
Edition statement
Edition statement of responsibility
Class of material specific details area
Statement of scale (cartographic)
Statement of projection (cartographic)
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Statement of scale (architectural)
Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
Physical description area
Physical description
5.0 m of textual and graphic records
Publisher's series area
Title proper of publisher's series
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Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
William Dempsey Valgardson was born in 1939 in Gimli, Manitoba, Canada. He attended Gimli High School; received a Bachelor of Arts from United College in 1961; a Bachelor of Education from the University of Manitoba in 1966; and completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing through the University of Iowa in 1969. Afterwards he taught at several high schools in Manitoba and at Cottey College in Missouri. In 1975 he joined the University of Victoria as a Professor of Creative Writing and served as the Department Chair from 1982-1987. He has published short stories, poems, novels, and children’s picture books; written newspaper and journal articles; adapted his stories for radio, television, and films; had his works translated into (at least) Spanish, German, Icelandic, and Ukranian; given readings and workshops all over North America and abroad; and maintained memberships in all the major Canadian U.S. writers’ and authors’ associations, including time as President of the Canadian Authors Association.
Custodial history
Records were donated to the University of Winnipeg Archives in 2001; they were organized and rehoused at the time, and subsequently described in 2012. A final portion of the collection was arranged and described in 2015.
Scope and content
Fonds reflects Valgardson’s career as a writer of fiction and non-fiction and a teacher of writing, and the records primarily illustrate his process of revising a work for publication and adaptation from one genre to another – from a short story to a radio play, for example. Most of the records are drafts, hand- or type-written, used for review and to make editing notes, accompanied by ancillary research or correspondence with publishers, reviewers, or the public. A portion of the records relate to his involvement in lecture series, workshops, and writing associations such as the Canadian Authors Association; and some records are comprised of articles, taken from newspapers and serials, and pamphlets, brochures, and bulletins, related to his own career, activities, and interests. Included in the fonds is a number of serial publications in which Valgardson’s writing was published, in some cases a piece not published elsewhere and for which no other record appears in the fonds. The records are arranged broadly by publication – the drafts of each piece and its accompanying material are contiguous, and the titles that went into an anthology are grouped together – but do not, on the whole, follow any particular chronological or categorical sequence. The fonds is arranged into boxes that reflect only spatial division, and files that reflect both item- and small series-level divisions.
Notes area
Physical condition
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Finding aids
Finding aid available