[BadBilly]

It's all a bit of an over-reaction. He said he only teaches the authors he really loves. He didn't say there weren't any good women authors, just not ones he is passionate about. He also said he didn't teach any Canadian authors in his course. Given that the University of Toronto is, arguably, the country's leading university and Alice Munro is, arguably, one of the best writers of short fiction around, he may be doing some disservice to his students. Still, I'm sure she gets coverage in other classes.

His comment about teaching "very serious heterosexual guys" has nothing to do with anti-gay sentiment but is a slightly cheeky response to the interviewer's assessment of the writers he's teaching as can be seen in the unedited transcript:

Gilmour: I’m not interested in teaching books by women. I’ve never found—Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one short story from Virginia Woolf. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would teach only the people that I truly, truly love. And, unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. Um. Except for Virginia Woolf. And when I try Virginia Woolf, I find she actually doesn’t work. She’s too sophisticated. She’s too sophisticated for even a third-year class. So you’re quite right, and usually at the beginning of the semester someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I’m good at is guys.

Keeler: And guys’ guys, too.

Gilmour: Yeah, very serious heterosexual guys. Elmore Leonard. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy guys. That’s a very good observation. Henry Miller. Uh. Philip Roth.

I've only ever read one David Gilmour book and I'm not sure I much cared for it, but it was a long time ago. However, he is something of a media celebrity in Canada and he does get nominated for and sometimes wins serious awards. He's a serious writer. However, that raises the question of whether he has real teaching chops or if putting him on the faculty was about having a celebrity in the role rather than an academic.