Douglas Durkin

Douglas Durkin (1884-1968) grew up in northern Ontario and Manitoba. He taught at Brandon College and the University of Manitoba before moving to New York, where he taught for a short time at Columbia University. He later married Martha Ostenso, composed several ballads with Carl Sandberg, and collaborated on a screenplay, Union Depot, with Gene Fowler. He also contributed short stories to Harper’s, Liberty, and Century. In 1958 Durkin and Ostenso retroactively claimed that work published under the name “Martha Ostenso” was collaborative work. This claim of co-authorship continues to cause debate among literary historians.