DEIRDRE HANNA

Photography Babak

Deirdre Hanna has written extensively on art, literature, design and cultural issues for magazines including C, Canadian Architect, Canadian Art, Details, Images, Masthead, Modern Painters, Opera Canada, Salon, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, Vanguard, The Walrus and NOW, where she was Art Editor for 14 years. Her writing has also been published in The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star. Her writing in literary magazines such as Capilano Review and Kiss Machine earned her the San Diego Reader's Zine Envy Award. She has made television and radio appearances on CBC, CFRB, TVO, BRAVO, CITY-TV and WTN.

As a feature writer, Deirdre's many cover stories and articles include interviews with prominent cultural figures such as musician David Byrne, astronaut Roberta Bondar as well as hockey greats Wayne Gretzky and Hayley Wickenheiser. The numerous international art stars she has profiled include Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, William Wegman, Robert Crumb, Richard Hamilton, Sandro Chia, Peter Beard, William Kentridge and Cindy Sherman. She has interviewed major Canadian visual artists Paterson Ewen, Betty Goodwin, John Scott, Robert Houle, Alex Colville, Marcel Dzama, Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow and architect Raymond Moriyama among others. Her keen eye for emerging talent and trends has made her among the first to recognize many now-notable cultural figures; author Catherine Bush, artists Janet Cardiff, Carl Beam, Attila Richard Lukacs, Jane Ash Poitras, James Lahey and Edward Poitras; and industrial designer Karim Rashid.

Deirdre has also interviewed many authors including William S. Burroughs, Jamaica Kincaid, Walter Mosley, William Gibson, Ian Rankin, Anne Perry, Tony Hillerman, Austin Clarke and Quentin Crisp. She considers drinking Diet Coke with Doris Lessing in the Nobel Laureate's living room to be a career highlight.

Born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Deirdre moved to Toronto via Berkeley, California and Reno, Nevada. She has an honours B.A. in Art History from Queen's University, where she was the first recipient of the prestigious Alfred Bader prize.

She has written exhibition catalogues for galleries including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the University of Guelph's MacDonald Stewart Art Centre and York University's Glendon Gallery. In 1997, artist-run center Mercer Union commissioned a body of her concrete poetry as an experimental alternative to the conventional catalogue and, in 2001, P.S. 1/MoMA (New York City) published her "Looking In On Janet Cardiff's Voyeuristic Art World" in the exhibition catalogue for its retrospective of the Venice Biennale Jury Prize winner.

Deirdre has been a panelist and guest lecturer for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontario College of Art and Design, the Print and Drawing Council of Canada, Queen's University, Ryerson Polytechnic University, York University and the University of Toronto. Her content is featured on the McMichael's award-winning web site art2life.

Deirdre Hanna lives in Toronto with her husband, their two children and a modest collection of contemporary Canadian art. She can be reached at deirdre@deirdrehanna.com.