John Wilson (Jack) Foster took early retirement in 2002 from UBC where he taught British and Irish literature for 28 years.  In 2004-05 he was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor to the UK; in 2005 Armstrong Visiting Professor, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto; in 2006 Faculty of Arts Visiting Fellow, National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2008 he returned to Northern Ireland where he has been Honorary Research Professor at his undergraduate alma mater, Queen’s University Belfast since 2009. He was Visiting Research Fellow, The Hub, Trinity College Dublin in 2011 and Professor of Modern Irish Literature, University of Ulster, 2013-14. He returned to British Columbia in 2021.

Since his retirement he has authored the following books:

• Irish Novels 1890-1940: New Bearings in Culture and Fiction.  Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture. Irish Academic Press. 2009.
• Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons.  Notting Hill Editions, 2014; New York Review Books, 2017.
• Titanic: Culture and Calamity  Belcouver Press, 2016.
• A Better Boy: A Titanic Monologue. Belcouver Press, 2017.
• The Space-Blue Chalcedony: Earth’s Crises and the Tyler Bounty. Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust, Seattle, 2020.
• Ireland Out of England and Other Inconveniences. Belcouver Press, 2024.

And edited the following books:

• The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• The Nabob: A Tale of Ninety-Eight by Andrew James. Four Courts Press, 2006.
• Midnight Again: The Wartime Letters of Helen Ramsey Turtle. Mahee Island, 2021.
• The Idea of the Union: Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  Eds. J.W.Foster and William Beattie Smith. Belcouver Press, 2021.