BIOGRAPHY

Erika Ritter is a novelist, playwright, essayist and former CBC Radio host and broadcaster. She is the author of a novel, The Hidden Life of Humans, a non-fiction work on human-animal relationships, The Dog by the Cradle, The Serpent Beneath, and three collections of essays: Urban Scrawl, Ritter in Residence and The Great Big Book of Guys: Alphabetical Encounters With Men. She has also been a newspaper and magazine columnist and a writer of short fiction.

Her produced stage plays include: A Visitor From Charleston, The Girl I Left Behind Me, The Splits and Automatic Pilot, winner of the Floyd S. Chalmers Play Award. She is also the author of a number of radio dramas produced by CBC Radio. She has been a Writer-in- Residence at the University of Prince Edward Island and the University of Toronto, as well as Playwright-in-Residence at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at the Stratford Festival. In August, 2022, a new play O, Happy Solitude, which speculates on the later life of reclusive playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins, had a public reading at Stratford.

As well, Ritter is at work on a novel in which features Watkins as a major character. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Erika Ritter has been a long-time resident of Toronto. Her interests include animal advocacy, drawing and needlework.