Biography
Marianne Letitia Ackerman
Born, Belleville, Ontario, 1952.
Education:
Grade school at SS No. 6 Massassaga
High School at Nicholson Catholic College, Belleville, Ontario.
B.A. Political Science (Hon) Carleton University, 1976.
Sorbonne, Paris. French language and culture, 1976-77.
M.A. University of Toronto, Drama, 1981.
1971-74: First job – weekend reporter for the Picton Bureau of the Kingston Whig-Standard. Summer staff at the Whig’s newsroom in Kingston, 1973 and 1974.
1975-78: The Ottawa Journal, summer of 1975,76. A staff position 1977-78.
1978: Birth of a daughter, Fiona Alessandra Ackerman, January.
1978-79: Joined The Sunday Post.
1980-81: Left full-time journalism to do an MA at the University of Toronto’s Drama Centre.
1981: Moved to Montreal, began free-lance journalism for The Gazette, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night Magazine, Maclean’s, CBC, Winnipeg Free Press, etc. Joined the staff of The Gazette in 1984 as theatre critic. Won the Nathan Cohen Award for Theatre Criticism 1985,1988. Resigned in 1988 to write full time. Continues to free-lance for various publications, including The Gazette.
1997: Following a hectic decade, M Ackerman did a pivot - handed Theatre 1774 over to someone who wanted it, sold her house on the Plateau, put the furniture in storage, and headed for the Eastern Townships to write a novel. Spent the Ice Storm in a lovely Knowlton retreat, curled up in the bathroom, heated by candlelight. Learned how to chew food slowly and got an email address.
A chance meeting with a Welsh painter in the summer of 1997 took her to Avignon, France. Upon closer inspection, said painter turned out to be a professor at the University of Avignon. Gwyn Campbell, prolific author of articles and books on economic history, the Indian Ocean, slavery, etc etc. In the summer of 1998, moved to La Roque Alric, a remote village north of Avignon with Campbell, where she undertook to help him restore an old mas. There she finished her novel, Jump about the trials and tribulations of doing theatre on the Plateau.
2004: She returned to Montreal with Gwyn Campbell, who had been offered a Canada Research Chair in economic history at McGill University. She has written a second novel, Matters of Hart.