In addition to his other pursuits, Ross A. Laird has been a professional writer since the release, in 2000, of his widely-acclaimed first book Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft. The narrative follows the meandering track of Dr. Laird's creative process as he completes eight craft projects. Grain of Truth became a national bestseller, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's award and the BC Book Prize, and was voted one of the most important books of 2000 by the Globe and Mail.

From peers, students, and the media, Ross A. Laird has received consistent feedback about the depth of his skill as an educator and the quality of his creative work in multiple disciplines. The list below provides a summary of impressions about his work.

Ross A. Laird is an interdisciplinary scholar, consultant, teacher, and creative artist. He is a best-selling author, psychotherapist, university professor, addictions and trauma specialist, consultant in the psychology of leadership, poet, and craftsman in wood and stone. Whether he's giving a keynote address at a psychology conference, working with heroin addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, or discussing his ideas about creativity on radio and television, Laird offers a unique blend of the arts and sciences. He is a storyteller, a philosopher, and an engaging speaker. He has appeared on CBC's Tapestry and North by Northwest, on Bravo's Book Television, and has been profiled in the Vancouver Sun. His first book appeared on Macleans national best-seller list.

Laird is a recipient of the Union Institute's Sussman Award for Academic Excellence for "ultimate academic achievement at the doctoral level." His doctoral dissertation, which subsequently was adapted into book form as Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's Award (the highest literary award in Canada) and the BC Book Prize. Grain of Truth was voted one of the 100 most important books of 2001 by the Globe and Mail and by Spirituality and Health magazine. Laird is also the recipient of the 1997 Cecilia B. Lamont poetry prize.

Laird's second book, A Stone's Throw: The Enduring Nature of Myth explains the origins of the mythologies of Egypt, Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Laird demonstrates how these mythologies have become the source of the most pressing conflicts in the contemporary world, from the Palestinian uprisings to September 11 to the war on terror. A Stone's Throw continues the themes of creativity and spirituality explored in Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft. Traversing five thousand years of history, and from the perspective of Laird as a craftsman sculpting stone in his shop, A Stone's Throw follows the evolution of sacred mythologies from the pharaohs and their pyramids to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the sacred Kaaba stone in Mecca, the Washington Monument, and the World Trade Center. A Stone's Throw offers readers a means of understanding the contemporary world with greater depth and clarity. Laird lays bare the shared heritage of religions, of peoples, of the essential themes of human nature.

Dr. Laird is a professor and instructor in counselling, psychology, and creative writing. He has taught at the following institutions:

• Simon Fraser University
• Vancouver Community College
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University
• The Union Institute and University
• Antioch University

He also provides consulting services to professional artists and graduate students in multiple disciplines, to addictions counsellors, to social service agencies and to corporations and educational institutions. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, is a registered member of the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors, and is the 2003 recipient of the Association's Communications Award.

His essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Geographic, and Pacific Yachting, for which he is a regular contributor.

A new book on addictions will be published in 2010.

Ross Laird's professional resume is attached below.

The chapter on alcohol is done. Whew. Now, on to marijuana. But here’s a snippet, a small fable from the chapter on alcohol, that I think some of my readers might enjoy. To inhabit an alcoholic home is to live…

Recently I facilitated a professional development workshop for social services professionals (counsellors, therapists, social workers, addictions specialists, native health workers, etc.) on the basic skills for running an effective and useful group. These skills apply not only to therapeutic settings but to all types of groups. The resource package for this workshop is provided here as a PDF. As usual, the document is licensed under Creative Commons. Feel free to copy and share (attached as pdf, below).

Sometimes, as I’ve been explaining ideas from the new addictions book to students and colleagues (see link at right for more info about the book), I have been challenged on my theory that childhood experiences such as trauma and neglect…

This week (Monday, to be precise) marks the anniversary of the publication, in 1851, of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Arguably the first modern novel, Moby Dick is a work of astonishing psychological depth and diversity. It is perhaps the foundational work of the literature of North America. And yet, most of the creative writing students I have worked with in the past few years have not read Moby Dick. Or at least they have not read it since high school or early university: as required — and therefore perfunctory — reading.

Such students have, however, read far wider than I in contemporary literature. They know all the hot new writers, and I am frequently chagrined to be such a traditionalist when there is clearly a great deal of excellent writing underfoot. On the other hand, I typically find a kind of sameness (that’s not exactly a literary word, but it’s the right word) to much modern — or as I should say, postmodern — writing. Much of it is too sharp for me, too witty, too strung together with various narrative devices. I’m too philosophical for that kind of thing, too slow. This is probably a personal as well as a creative shortcoming.

But I have difficulty finding anything revelatory in most (post)modern writing. I find I’m drawn consistently back to Borges and Blake and Conrad, to all those odd and old characters who have been deconstructed and demythologized and debunked. It seems to me that their work still feels fresh, though their writing has been imitated endlessly and built upon by generations of enterprising writers (including me). Those crusty characters (and earlier ones, such as Shakespeare and Milton) have provided the foundation of the English literary world today, and I believe that contemporary writers need to know about such work in order to know the craft of writing.

So here’s my shortest possible list of what every writer struggling to master the craft (which one can never do, of course) should read, in the order given, as a way of understanding how we have arrived at the literary tradition we have today:

• The Odyssey (Homer)
• The Book of Job (in the Bible)
• The Tempest (Shakespeare)
• Paradise Lost (John Milton)
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (William Blake)
• Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
• Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
• Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
• Wind, Sand, and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
• Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
• Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)

Technically, Don Quixote should also be on this list (after Shakespeare), since that book seems to be the worldwide favorite of literature professors. But I haven’t read it (it’s on my list). More of my favorite books are on my books page.

If you read the works in the above list in order, you will see the slow development of the modern psyche and of the modern artistic temperament. (I wrote about this development in A Stone’s Throw). You will also get a sense of how nothing new has been devised since the earliest mythopoetic sagas. And finally, if you are a writer, you might see how your own work fits into the crazy tapestry that is the literary tradition.

Lately, almost all of my writing has been devoted to the new addictions book. I haven’t been working on articles much, or personal essays, or teaching materials. However, I have written an essay about what I’m calling the geek life. It was great fun to write, and by taking egregious advantage of the acronym tag in html, I have managed to embed the many accessory notes that in a printed version would have ended up in a glossary. (Hover your mouse over any underlined item, your cursor will turn into a question mark, and the comment will appear.)

I hope you enjoy it. It’s my favorite essay of the year.