George McWhirter’s Catalan Poems was a recipient of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize (shared with Chinua Achebe, 1972). His work also received the Macmillan Prize for Poetry, (University of British Columbia, 1969), the F.R. Scott Translation Prize for The Selected Poems of José Emilio Pacheco (1988), The Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction at the BC Book Awards (1988), the League of Canadian Poets’ Canadian Chapbook Prize (for Ovid in Saskatchewan, 1998). He was honoured with a Killam Prize for teaching in 1998 and the first Killam Prize for Mentoring at UBC in 2004. In 2005, he was a recipient of the Sam Black Award for his contribution to the Creative & Performing Arts and in the same year honoured as a Lifetime Member of the League of Canadian Poets for his contribution to Canadian poetry. On March 13, 2007, at Vancouver City Hall, he was inaugurated as the City’s first Poet Laureate. For his Vancouver Poet Laureate projects, he edited A Verse Map of Vancouver with photographs by Derek Von Essen (Anvil Press, 2009) and his version of Euripides’ Hecuba was produced by Blackbird Theatre at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in late December of 2007 and early January 2008. Also, in 2008, The Incorrection, was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize at the BC Book Prizes. He was awarded the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize for his translation of  Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence by Homero Aridjis.

McWhirter received his BA & DipEd from Queen’s University in Belfast, where he was classmates in Honours English from 1957 to 1961 with the poets Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, and Robert Dunbar, the Irish literary critic. He taught at Kilkeel Secondary and Bangor Grammar School, County Down (1962-1965) and at the University of Barcelona’s Escuela de Idiomas (1965-1966). He came to Canada in 1966 and first taught high school in Port Alberni. He received his M.A. from UBC in 1970, staying on to eventually become a full Professor and Head of the UBC Creative Writing Program from 1983 until 1993. He was associated with Prism international magazine as Managing Editor (68-69), Poetry Editor (70-76) and Co-Editor (1975-76), then as Advisory Editor from 1977-2002.  He was editor of Words from the Inside (a Canadian Prison Arts magazine) in 1974 and 1975.

His books of poetry include Catalan Poems (Oberon Press, 1971), Queen of the Sea (Oberon Press, 1976), Twenty-Five (Fiddlehead editions, 1978), The Island Man (Oberon Press, 1981), Fire Before Dark, (Oberon, 1983), A Staircase For All Souls (Oolichan Books, 1996), Incubus: The Dark Side of the Light (Oberon Press, 1997), The Book of Contradictions (Oolichan Books, 2002), The Incorrection, (Oolichan Books, 2007), and The Anachronicles (Ronsdale Press, 2008).

McWhirter has published three novels, Paula Lake (Oberon Press, 1985), The Listeners (Oberon 1991), and Cage (Oberon 1987), which was a recipient of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize at the B.C. Book Awards in 1988. As well novels, he has six collections of short stories, which include Bodyworks (Oberon, 1974), God’s Eye (Oberon, 1981), Coming to Grips with Lucy (Oberon, 1982), A Bad Day To Be Winning (Oberon, 1984) and Musical Dogs (Oberon, 1996), and The Gift of Women, (Exile Editions, 2015).

As principal translator & editor he has published The Selected Poems of José Emilio Pacheco (New Directions, 1987), as co-editor & principal translator, Ojos de otro mirar / Eyes to See Otherwise: The Selected Poems of Homero Aridjis, 1966-2000 (Carcanet/New Directions, 2002); as sole translator, Poemas solares / Solar Poems by Homero Aridjis (City Lights, 2009), Tiempo de ángeles / A Time of Angels (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012), Autorretrato en la zona de silencio / Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence (New Directions, 2023), as the editor and contributing translator for an anthology of Mexican poets, Where Words Like Monarchs Fly (Anvil Press, 1999). He is also a major English translator for The Selected Poetry of  Gabriel Zaid (Paul Dry Books, 2014) and is Zaid’s principal English translator for Volume 6 of his collected work, Poemas Traducidos (Colegio Nacional, 2023).

His anthology appearances for poetry and translation range in time and place from Soundings 72, edited by Seamus Heaney for Blackstaff Press in Belfast, to The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse (1973 and 1991 editions), 20^th Century Latin American Poetry (University of Texas Press, 1996), Irish Writing in the 20^th Century (Cork University Press, 2000), The Blackbird’s Nest: An Anthology of Poetry from Queen’s University Belfast (Blackstaff Press, 2003), internationalWORLD BEAT poetry now, edited by Eliot Weinberger (New Directions, 2006), In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry (Polestar, 2005), Rocksalt: An anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Publications Inc., 2008), Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (Bibliosis, 2008); his poems “Five Points North of Steveston” and “A Season of Easy Meat,” were featured on the Vancouver buses for Poetry in Transit, 1994-1995 and 2008-09, respectively.