Norman Ravvin is a critic, professor, teacher, fiction and non-fiction writer, and editor. His books include A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity,and Memory (McGill-Queen's University Press); Hidden Canada: An Intimate Travelogue (Red Deer Press); the edited volume Not Quite Mainstream: Canadian Jewish Short Stories (Red Deer Press and the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies); a collection of stories entitled Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish (paperplates); and a novel, Café des Westens (Red Deer Press); and his latest work of fiction, Lola by Night (paperplates).

Norman Ravvin's scholarly work has focused on Holocaust literature, postwar Canadian and American fiction, ethics, religion and literature, and Yiddish studies. Among others, he has published work on Bruno Schulz, Edgar Allan Poe, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Chava Rosenfarb, and Leonard Cohen. His essay on Jewish travel to Eastern Europe has appeared in the journal Canadian Literature, and his chapter on Jews in Canada will be included in a forthcoming volume on ethnicity in Canada, to be published at the University of Victoria. His journalism, criticism and fiction have appeared in many Canadian magazines, as well as on CBC Radio.

Ravvin is the general editor of Hungry I Books, as well as a series on Canadian Jewish writing and history co-published by Red Deer Press in Calgary and the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies. He is a native of Calgary, and prior to coming to Montreal, he taught literature and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick and the University of Toronto.

At Concordia University, he teaches courses on Canadian Jewish Studies from a religious, literary, and historical perspective, as well as courses on the Holocaust, ethics, and postmodernist thought.