Hi there! Welcome to my website. I am a professional writer, editor and singer/song-writer who lives in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada, in the ridiculously beautiful Okanagan Valley.
I have had ten books of mine published in Canada: six volumes of poetry, one volume of short stories, two novels and a book of conversations about the writing life with the writer Robert Kroetsch. I have edited thirty-five volumes of poetry, fiction and non-fiction for publication.
I am also a singer/song-writer, originally from Edmonton, and I have appeared on a variety of CDs, making guest appearances as a background vocalist on other people’s work, and on three CDs with my own songs: Thicker Than Water, The Lent Brothers’ Band (1991), Shadow Moon, The Lent/Fraser/Wall Trio (2005), and most recently, Strange Ground, John Lent (2018).
I taught Literature and Creative Writing and Canadian Literature courses at Okanagan College for over thirty years, and was a Dean at Okanagan College for the last five years of my employment.
I helped found The Kalamalka New Writers’ Society, Kalamalka Press and the Kalamalka Insitute For Working Writers. I am now retired from teaching and walk my dog Mosey every day and live happily with my wife, the visual artist Jude Clarke. I am still performing with the Lent/Fraser/Wall Trio, and with the bass player Mark Nishihara, and am also writing and editing. I have just completed a new book of poems called A Matins Flywheel which will be released in 2019 by Thistledown Press, and a book about aesthetics and contemporary composition with the writer Jake Kennedy called Marshal Fields.
I have been a Writer In Residence at Red Deer College, and have been a visiting writer at The Banff Centre For The Arts, The Wallace Stegner House, Sage Hill Writing Experience and the Victoria School Of Writing. I have read at Literary Festivals in the Okanagan, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Moose Jaw, and have read my work across Canada and in France and England.
In 2009 I was proclaimed the Poet Laureate of the Okanagan Valley and in 2005 I was short-listed for the BC Book Awards for the best work of fiction for my novel So It Won’t Go Away. I am a member of The Writers Union Of Canada and SOCAN Canada, the professional association for song-writers and performers.
WATCH THE DOC ‘JOHN LENT: A LIFE WORTH TELLING,’ By Jay Ruzesky
John Lent 