Prominent Montreal author Heather O’Neill said Concordia must act now to put a stop to a culture of predatory behaviour in its creative writing department.
“It has to change,” said O’Neill, who attended the program. “It has just been too disgusting for too long.”
O’Neill told the Montreal Gazette in an interview Wednesday that she was one of the victims of what she called a “gross abuse of authority” perpetrated by men who not only control the grades their students get, but have the power to launch their careers in the literary world.
“I was harassed by a particular professor there, who originally initiated contact by calling me at home and saying he wanted to publish some of my poems in the university literary magazine. Of course, I was delighted,” O’Neill said. She said when she met the professor for drinks, she realized he was more interested in establishing a sexual relationship.
“In his mind, it was a date, and he kept making sexual advances.” (more...)
This could be the beginning of a firestorm in Canadian arts and letters. Err... no female Lotharios?
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| Good for the goose... good for the gander? |
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