Gwendolyn MacEwen (September 1, 1941-November 29, 1987) was a Canadian novelist and poet.

MacEwen was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her first poem was published in The Canadian Forum when she was only 17, and she left school at 18 to pursue a writing career. She married poet Milton Acorn in 1962, although they divorced two years later.

MacEwen won the Governor General's Award in 1969 for her poetry collection The Shadow Maker. She won her second Governor General's Award in 1987 for Afterworlds.

MacEwen was regarded as one of Canada's greatest poets, whose work was visionary, witty and drew readily on themes and images of magic and mythology.

She served as Writer in Residence at the University of Western Ontario in 1985, and the University of Toronto in 1986 and 1987.

MacEwen died in 1987, at the age of 46, of health problems related to alcoholism. Rosemary Sullivan published a biography of MacEwen, Shadow Maker, in 1998. As well, a park in Toronto has been named in her honour.

Works

• Selah (1961)
• The Drunken Clock (1961)
• The Rising Fire (1963)
• Julian the Magician (1963, novel)
• A Breakfast for Barbarians (1966)
• The Shadow-Maker (1969)
• King of Egypt, King of Dreams (1971, novel)
• Noman (1972, short fiction)
• The Armies of the Moon (1972)
• Magic Animals: Selected Poems Old and New (1974)
• Mermaids and Ikons: A Greek Summer (1978, travel)
• The Chocolate Moose (1979, children's)
• The Trojan Women (1979, adaptation of the play by Euripides)
• The Fire-Eaters (1982)
• The T. E. Lawrence Poems (1982)
• The Honey Drum (1983)
• Noman's Land (1985, novel)
• Earth-Light: Selected Poetry 1963-1982 (1982)
• The Man with Three Violins (1986)
• Afterworlds (1987)
• Dragon Sandwiches (1987, children's)