Item 0004a - Letter with enclosure, Toronto, to Lorne Pierce,

John Raymond Knister was a Canadian poet, novelist, story writer, columnist, and reviewer. Born at Ruscom (now part of Lakeshore), Ontario, near Windsor, Knister attended Victoria College at the University of Toronto, but had to drop out after catching pneumonia. At the age of eighteen he began to take a serious interest in literature, writing his first poems and short stories. While in Toronto he contributed articles on Miguel de Cervantes and Robert Louis Stevenson to Acta Victoriana, the college literary magazine.

In 1919 Knister began writing and publishing stories and poems about Canadian farm life. He worked in 1922 and 1923 as a book reviewer for the Windsor Border Cities Star and the Detroit Free Press. He moved to Iowa in 1923 to become associate editor of literary magazine The Midland in Iowa City for a year. During the same time he took courses in creative writing at Iowa State University. By 1924 Knister was a taxi driver in Chicago, as well as a reviewer for Poetry magazine and the Chicago Evening Post. In Toronto he became acquainted with writers Morley Callaghan, Mazo de la Roche, Merrill Denison, and Charles G.D. Roberts.

Knister married Myrtle Gamble in 1927. They had one daughter, Imogen, born in 1930. In 1931, Knister moved to Montreal, Quebec. In 1932, Ryerson Press, which had picked up the rights to My Star Predominant, offered Knister a job as an editor. Before he was to begin working there, Knister drowned in a swimming accident on Lake St. Clair while on a picnic with his family.