John Robert Colombo, CM (born March 24, 1936) is a Canadian writer, editor, and poet. He has published over 200 titles, including major anthologies and reference works.

Early life

Colombo was born in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1936. He attended the University of Toronto, where he began organizing literary events in the late 1950s. He started writing and publishing poetry in the early 1960s; his first book of poetry Lines for the Last Days was illustrated by William Kurelek. Through his imprint, Hawkshead Press, he published Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry in 1963. He also facilitated the appearance of first books of fiction written by Hugh Hood and Alice Munro, as well as the first mass-market publication of a science-fiction story by Robert J. Sawyer. He served as literary manager of the old Bohemian Embassy in Toronto, writing poetry and pioneering "found poetry" in Canada. He later moved into editorial positions with prominent Toronto's publishing houses, including McClelland and Stewart and Hurtig. During this period, he edited George Grant's Lament for a Nation, and served as managing editor of the Tamarack Review, then the leading literary quarterly.

Writing career

In the early 1970s, Colombo began working on the first of many anthologies, a collection of quotations from prominent Canadians titled Colombo's Canadian Quotations. Following the success of the quotations collection, Colombo went on to publish dozens of collections, ranging from bibliographies of Canadian reference works to collections of folk tales, stories of the paranormal, and UFO sightings. As of 2014, Colombo has published over 200 titles, making him the second-most prolific author in Canadian literary history. His anthology writing earned him the nickname "the Master Gatherer" among Canadian writers and literary critics. He was dubbed "Canada's Mr. Mystery" for his compilations of the paranormal. In the 1990s, Colombo began publishing his writing through his own imprint, Colombo and Company.

Works

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Poetry

Reference works

Anthologies

Humour

Recognition