Michael Turner (musician)
Michael Turner (born 1962 in North Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian musician and writer of poetry, prose, and opera librettos. His work often looks closely at everyday things.
He helped form the Vancouver band Hard Rock Miners in 1987, where he sang and played guitar and banjo. The band toured Canada and released four rockabilly albums. His 1993 book Hard Core Logo is about his time fronting the band. He also wrote Company Town (1991) and Kingsway (1995). His later works, American Whiskey Bar (1997) and The Pornographer's Poem (1999), mix different formats and ideas.
In 1996 Bruce McDonald directed a film based on Hard Core Logo, and in 1998 he directed a live Citytv telecast dramatizing American Whiskey Bar. Turner started Advance Editions, a literary/visual art imprint, with Arsenal Pulp Press in 1998.
He appeared as the dance MC in the 1998 short film Elimination Dance, directed by McDonald with Don McKellar and Michael Ondaatje. His work has been adapted for radio, stage, TV, and film, and has been translated into several languages. He won the Genie Award in 1996 for Music/Original Song and the 2000 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; he was a finalist for the 1992 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
Turner has collaborated with artist Stan Douglas on two experimental video screenplays, Journey into Fear (Istanbul Biennial, 2001) and Suspiria (Documenta XI, 2002), as well as a screenplay with Bruce LaBruce called Untitled Von Gloeden Project, about photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was commissioned to write a libretto for the Modern Baroque Opera Company based on Wilhelm Busch's Max & Moritz.
He lives in Vancouver, writes art essays, and edits Advance Editions.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 01:32 (CET).