Welcome to the website of award-winning writer and freelance journalist Brad Mackay. This site is currently undergoing renovations. In the interim, please check out my personal blog The Cultural Magpie.

If you’re interested in my profile of Canadian artist and cartoonist George Feyer which was published in Canada’s History magazine, you can find it here: “The Twisted Genius of George Feyer”

What about me? I’m a Canadian writer and journalist who has worked at the National Post and CBC.ca and have been published in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, CBC Arts Online, Toronto Life, Quill & Quire, enRoute, NOW and University Affairs magazine, and Canada’s History magazine.

In addition to penning overly researched opuses about dead cartoonists, I’ve written about scuba diving in the Arctic, high-stakes pigeon racing in Las Vegas, the nomadic Afar in the Horn of Africa, how to block a hat, and the state of lawn bowling in Toronto.

I’ve also written and co-edited (with Seth) a biography about the Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright called The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist Volume 1 about which Chris Ware said:

“I’ve read Brad Mackay’s Doug Wright book — twice — because it paints one of the most vivid, sympathetic and approachable portraits of a cartoonist of which I’m aware. I knew absolutely nothing about Wright before reading the book, but now he seems to be virtually my contemporary. Mackay’s writing turned him into a real man, through and through.”

I also wrote the introductions for three collection of Doug Wright’s “Nipper” comic strips for Drawn and Quarterly, and an essay on Wright for Drawn and Quarterly’s 25th Anniversary anthology.

And (not that I’m one for recognizing patterns or anything) but in 2004 I co-founded The Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning which honour the best in Canadian comics past and present. You can read a recent essay I wrote about Wright for Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels on the Doug Wright Awards website.