Michael Turner (musician)
Michael Turner (born 1962 in North Vancouver, British Columbia) is a musician, and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos. His writing is noted for including detailed and purposeful examination of ordinary things. Career. Turner was an original member of the Vancouver band Hard Rock Miners, formed in 1987, singing and playing guitar and banjo. The band toured across Canada and released four albums of rockabilly music. His 1993 book "Hard Core Logo" is about his experiences while fronting the band. Turner wrote "Company Town" in 1991, and followed it with Hard Core Logo in 1993 and  Kingsway in 1995. Turner employed multi-format and intertextual approaches in his works "American Whiskey Bar" (1997), and "The Pornographer's Poem" (1999). In 1996, Bruce McDonald directed a film based on "Hard Core Logo"; he also directed a live telecast dramatizing Turner's novel "American Whiskey Bar" in 1998, which Citytv produced and aired. That year he founded the literary/visual art imprint Advance Editions, with Arsenal Pulp Press. In 1998, he appeared as the dance MC and announcer in the short film "Elimination Dance", directed by McDonald with Don McKellar and Michael Ondaatje. Turner's work was adapted  to radio, stage, television and feature film, and he has been translated into French, German, Russian, and Korean. He won the Genie Award in 1996 for Music/Original Song, the 2000 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was also a finalist for the 1992 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Turner collaborated with artist Stan Douglas on two experimental-video screenplays, titled "Journey into Fear" (Istanbul Biennial, 2001) and "Suspiria" (Documenta XI, 2002) and on a screenplay with filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, titled "Untitled Von Gloeden Project", based on the life and work of photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was commissioned to write a  libretto for the Modern Baroque Opera Company, based on Wilhelm Busch's "Max & Moritz". Turner lives in Vancouver, writes art essays and edits Advance Editions.