Inside the Bag

Inside the Bag is a resource archive that focuses on the Canadian Literature Centre / Centre de littérature canadienne (CLC) Brown Bag Lunch Reading  series. It includes three phases at present, with the second and third phases currently in progress.

Phase I features ten living authors and ten critical responses to their work. The CLC reaches into its ten-year archive of Brown Bag Lunch Readings to sample some of the most diverse and powerful voices in contemporary Canadian literature: Alice Major, Caterina Edwards, Eden Robinson, Gregory Scofield, Kim Thúy, Lynn Coady, Marina Endicott, Michael Crummey, Ying Chen, and Lawrence Hill. All authors have been through the doors of the CLC this past decade to give inspirational readings, talks, and interviews. This first phase works in conjunction with the print anthology, Ten Canadian Writers in Context (U Alberta P, 2016), serving as a digital extension of the literary and critical work represented in the volume. Phase II adds to the archive ten more writers, from the CLC Kreisel Lecture Series, in the same way, and Phase III will introduce ten more writers from the Brown Bag series to further the archive’s purpose as both a research and a teaching tool.

This project is an interactive resource for students, researchers, and general readers that sets the stage for literary research by compiling information about Canadian writers in a single place. As both a research and a pedagogical resource, Inside the Bag creates conversations between works by Canadian writers of different backgrounds, communities, and regions, who write in English, French, and Cree, as well as various critical perspectives on their work. It collects primary source material with close to exhaustive information on secondary scholarship. The research value of the archive is also largely pedagogical. Our intention for this archive is to provide instructors with a tool that students as well as the general reader can use to develop their own research interests and skills. We encourage wide use of Inside the Bag, and it is our vision that Inside the Bag bridges the gap between the academy and the community.

As the western hub of the Canadian literary community, the CLC  brings together researchers, students, authors, publishers, collectors, and the reading public to promote the strength and diversity of Canada’s written culture, and promotes research of Canadian literature, in both English and French, of all genres, languages, and regions

The CLC acknowledges its location in the territory of the nations of Treaty No. 6 and of the Métis and Blackfoot nations.