He was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 1988 Governor General's Awards for his short story collection The Cost of Living.
[1] Originally from Windsor, Ontario, he resided in Quebec as an adult, where he taught at John Abbott College in Montreal.
[1] He was a shortlisted nominee for the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1989 for Distant Relations,[2] and has won the Hugh Maclennan Prize for Fiction in 1989 for Distant Relations[3] and in 1991 for A Private Performance.
[4] He has also served as co-editor of Matrix, a literary magazine devoted to English-language writing in Montreal.
[5] He wrote the afterword for the New Canadian Library edition of Yves Beauchemin's novel The Alley Cat.