This special issue of Authorship, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to analyzing the diverse historical and discursive settings of authorship, is devoted to the cultural performance of authorship in Canada. The issue includes scholarly essays by Carole Gerson and Alix Shield on the drawings and photographs that appeared in most books by E. Pauline Johnson, Canada’s first prominent Indigenous author; Brendan F.R. Edwards on the literary careers of Indigenous writers Bernice Winslow Loft (Dawendine) and Ethel Brant Monture; Ceilidh Hart on the authorial personae of city poets Robert Kirkland Kernighan and Bren Simmers; Bridgette Brown on the publishing conditions and reception history of Sara Jeannette Duncan’s satirical novel Cousin Cinderella: A Canadian Girl in London; Karol’Ann Boivin and Marie-Pier Luneau on the popular Québec series Roman d’amour put out by Éditions Police-Journal; Janet B. Friskney on the New Brunswick-based popular fiction writer Dan Ross; Robert Thacker on the dynamics of authorship that shaped the literary connection between prose writers William Maxwell and Alice Munro; and Lorraine York on how the literary and activist career of Marlene NourbeSe Philip challenges prevailing conceptions of authorship in Canada.

Taken together, the essays in this special issue trace the rise of Canadian authorship over the course of the twentieth century through to the present. They combine to investigate the difficulties and advances, the practice and culture, of literary and professional authorship.