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Q&A

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In the spring of 2020, Lesley Choyce will publish his landmark 100th book, an essay collection entitled Saltwater Chronicles. Which brings us to a question: how in the world can a human accomplish something so Herculean?  

It’s one thing to read 100 books. Or write 100 poems. Or, for that matter, surf 100 waves.  

To write and publish 100 books is, for most mortals, an impossible feat. Could it be something in the saltwater? 

“Surfers tend to age gracefully in case you didn’t know.” 

I first met Lesley Choyce at a Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia Halloween party in 2006. He came as an obsessed Star Trek fan, his eyes covered by some kind of gold vacuum filter. The conversation was fittingly spacy, pinballing from the size of the universe to the metaphorical implications of black holes.  

I was in thrall; Choyce’s verbal energy felt like a comet streaking through the night. Who was this mad-masked philosopher? What planet was he from?  

I didn’t know it then, but I was in the presence of a man who had already published a constellation of books. 

I ran into Choyce numerous times over the years, each encounter as weird and wonderful as the first. I’d see him in the surf at Lawrencetown Beach in his signature dry suit, knee-paddling into clean waves, dancing down the face like a stylish praying mantis.  

I’d catch a glimpse of him at his Pottersfield Press booth at the Word on the Street festival, looking literary in his glasses and trademark wild, curly hair. I’d visit him in his spartan, technology-free Dalhousie office, Zen calm exuding through his firmly planted bare feet.  

As time ticked by, Choyce kept writing at warp speed, to the tune of nearly three books a year.  

Now, Choyce and I are perched in his kitchen overlooking Lawrencetown Lake, placid ocean shimmering in the distance. As he hands me a glass of beer, I try to get a closer look at his hair, which I wrongly assumed would be deep into grey territory. Not so much—lots of pepper, very little salt.  

Choyce, now 69 years old, appears as if he’s never grown facial hair. Must be the surfing, I think. The ocean has always been his fountain of youthful exuberance.  

I’ve just finished reading the manuscript of Saltwater Chronicles and I’m bubbling over with stoke. Like every experience I’ve had reading Choyce’s work—which runs from adult fiction to poetry to children’s stories to local history, and, most prolifically, young adult fiction—I find his words strike a gong of truth in my head.  

Most of the essays in this collection come from a series of columns he wrote for the Chronicle Herald between 2014 and 2017, pieces I remember enjoying as they landed on my doorstep. My favourites are his meditations on things like surfing, napping, reading, hiking and plumbing the subconscious for stories. What keeps me coming back to Choyce is his deep and abiding love for his adopted home, his muse, fair Nova Scotia. 

The vast majority of Choyce’s 100 books are set in the province, usually within shouting distance of the omnipresent Atlantic Ocean. My well-worn copy of his 1995 book of poems, The Coastline of Forgetting, taught me everything I know about walking on cobblestones.  

From a historical perspective, it’s hard to surpass his 1996 living history, Nova Scotia: Shaped By The Sea. And then there’s his most successful novel, The Republic of Nothing, which stamps the eccentricity of the rugged Eastern Shore in a reader’s mind forever.  

Choyce may have come here from New Jersey as a responsibility dodger in 1978, but almost everything he has created since then is an ode to the place where he first planted his freak flag. 

“Good writing and a good story will not only survive but prevail.” 

As we settle into our pints, I ask him how it feels to have his 100th book coming out.  

“The fact that it’s my 100th book worries me a little,” he replies, leaning back on his stool. “People might say, ‘Oh, he just cranks them out, this is just another one.’  

“Never feels that way to me. I just feel so privileged that I get to write another book.”  

Feeling brave, I ask him if he thinks an author can write 100 quality books.  

“I doubt it.” He shrugs. “I’m sure there’s a few that aren’t so great. But I don’t go back and judge. To be honest, I don’t even read my books after they’re published.”  

Aside from a few wonky covers, Choyce says he has no publishing regrets.  

Part of Choyce’s magnetic personality is his lack of cynicism. He tells me, “It’s a beautiful thing to write a book and have people read it.”  

When I bring up the topic of legacy, he pauses and turns his eyes to Lawrencetown Lake, chewing on the question. “I’d be pleased if people saw I was diverse,” he says, “that I tried many different things. Maybe that I didn’t fit into any standard literary roles of the day.”  

I tell him I consider him a trailblazer, but Choyce deflects my praise, turning to the future instead.  

If his writing career was a baseball game, I ask, what inning would he be in now? “I feel like I’m in the middle of the game. So, 4th or 5th inning?”  

“If you are a writer or an artist, you damn well better be good friends with your subconscious.” 

Out the window we catch the sun suspended above the treeline. Afternoon slips into evening. I ask for some writerly advice.  

“Keep your mouth shut and write,” he tells me straight, dousing my hypothesis that he possesses some kind of super power. “Don’t talk your story out before you write it. Create and then revise. 

“Write the books you want to write. Start close to home and build. Keep coming back to the stories that are most important to you.”  

I get the sense that writing is nourishment to Choyce, a compulsion he must follow if he is to stay vital. 

In a stand-out essay from Saltwater Chronicles, “The Care and Feeding of the Subconscious Mind,” he shares his belief that one’s dreams, wild irrational thoughts and inner voices all come from that deep, unruly place in the brain. When faced with a plot line issue or a real-life problem, Choyce believes that filing it away in the subconscious is key.  

“Don’t keep chewing it over in your rational mind like a piece of gristle you just chomped into at the Steak and Stein,” he writes, “just let the ole boy do the trick.”  

Though he is careful to remind us he is no neuroscience expert, I find his suggestion revolutionary. Choyce trusts his subconscious, or “gut,” unconditionally. If you nurture your imagination and treat it with respect, art will have no choice but to flow. 

“I, myself, like getting off the main trails and just walking in the woods.” 

As we near the bottom of our respective beers, I share an observation with Choyce: his 100th book contains more than three references to getting lost on purpose. He laughs and drains his glass.  

I picture him hiking down a worn footpath through wind-battered Nova Scotian scrub spruce. He barely hesitates when he gets to Robert Frost’s famed fork. Instead of choosing one of the set paths, he strides straight ahead, punching into raw forest until he is good and swallowed by the green. 

Choyce navigates by inner vision, chasing the future as he creates. A hundred books is an incredible accomplishment, surpassed only by Isaac Asimov and a few others. Mad props are in order.  

Based on the sheer amount of juice left in his veins, he’s nowhere near the finish line. Riffing on the importance of getting lost, Choyce whispers me his secret.  

“As you know, there’s no straight lines in a Nova Scotian forest—just a mass of trees all bunched together. Really, though, you can’t get lost here. All you have to do is listen for the sound of the ocean. The coast will always bring you back.” 

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On being home…
That’s a complicated and complex question. I live in Toronto, where I have all kinds of friends and feel at home. But in Toronto, family is who I share blood with, so I’m more at home in Cape Breton because the whole island, really, is family. People are interested in who your grandfather is, and not just my generation. I met a young woman recently, hardly more than 18, and asked if she was from around here. She said, yes, but her family only moved here 100 years ago.

Big versus small…
Large, complex societies are more guarded. No one knows each other well enough to let it all hang out—you either trust people enough or you don’t. There’s a number of things about growing up in a small place, and not just in Cape Breton, where people are conscious of being either unique or marginal, whether ethnic or social, and that makes you very aware of needing people and interested in knowing your neighbours.

Knowing thy neighbours…
Small places impose a certain kind of civility. You weigh in a little more not to be gratuitously critical or alienate people because you never know who a person might be related to. My wife, not from here, asks why that’s important. It’s because someday, when you need someone, if you’ve insulted their third cousin, you might be out of luck. It also means you know a lot about people and what makes them tick which naturally lends itself to storytelling or music.

What comes with a civil society…
There’s no higher form of civility than to entertain. Every kid grows up wanting the favourable attention of an adult, and the best way to get that is to play the fiddle. If you can’t play the fiddle, you have to tell a story. So there’s an oral tradition, passed between generations, embedded in stories from simple, ordinary lives. Turning that into something that holds attention puts a high premium on clever speech and humour. You learn to embellish anecdotes from daily living and make them entertaining enough that people remember you.

Telling stories of Atlantic Canada…
Fiction writing is huge in Atlantic Canada, and I’d be burned at the stake if I didn’t acknowledge that. Yet, I’m always surprised when people outside the Atlantic region ask—why do your stories focus on people down that way? No one questions an Irish writer why Ireland is a character in a story. Canadian literature has a lot of pressure to get in other area codes and wedge in other references. Books that could be purely about one place and still win national respectability are overshadowed by the books from people and places that we don’t even know.

It’s all about the place…
Place has a huge impact on what makes people who they are and the stories they tell. In Cape Breton, a mother’s belief in a life spent in the coal mine shapes a man’s life, and he carries that narrative instinct from a deep place he probably couldn’t even articulate. But he has a story of universal truth to tell and a point to make and place makes it memorable. It’s a crucial character in every story, no matter where, including Cape Breton.

When it comes down to it…
Sometimes, no matter how sophisticated our literary output, either we remain marginal to the world or there’s this expectation we must be eccentric. In some ways, we’re okay with that. The Atlantic region has a wide range of writers who may never get a Giller, but if they make a splash at an Atlantic anything, that’s big. If they go on to national recognition, that’s fine for financial security, but what every creative Atlantic person most cares about is Atlantic Canadians—the people who matter to them and who they matter to. ■

LINDEN MacINTYRE’sbook, The Wake, was published this fall. He’s currently working on another project and mentioned working on The Wake “until the day they took it out of my hands.”

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K: You were a child when your great-aunt, Portia White, passed. How was it that you got to know her so well? 

GEC:  I was child of the 60s, and my parents were all too aware their children had to grow up in an inclement, racialized environment as “coloured” or “negro,” relegated to a community that was economically repressed, socially disrespected and politically unimportant. 

It was important to them, as our consciousness was developing, that we know we were connected to this great lady, to instill pride in ourselves and to help us understand that we could realize our potential and to never to take a back seat to anyone because—look at what Portia achieved. So those days, when we were looked upon as an expression of a negative stereotype, one of our arsenals for that was to say our great-aunt sang for the queen.

And that made storytelling essential. My grandmother, Nettie, (Portia’s sister) and my father made sure to repeat all the stories. It was almost ceremonial… the same photo album got dragged out, and the White family were retold family successes, and not just Portia’s. 

K: So there is more to tell, in addition to Portia’s story. Can you share some history on the White family’s DNA?

GEC:  The “black” White family was extraordinary. My great-great grand-parents, Andrew and Isabella White, were from Virginia and former slaves. Andrew and Isabella had good relations with their ex-master, Mr. White, and eventually built a church on the property he gave to them, post-civil war, which still stands today. Their son and my great-grandfather, William, dreamt of becoming a millionaire. But he heard the calling and decided to study for the ministry. He attended bible college in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to Nova Scotia, becoming the third black to graduate from Acadia University in 1898, the first black officer in the British Army in 1916 and the head of the African United Baptist Association. And then there is Portia, of course, and my Uncle Lorne, a regular on Singalong Jubilee alongside Anne Murray, and my dad’s brother, Bruce, first black police officer in Vancouver… the list goes on.

K: On to the book, which is gorgeous, the verse lilting, sumptuous, evocative and alive. And the words you wrote, they are her words. How did you get to her voice?

Illustration from PORTIA WHITE: A Portrait in Words, by George Elliott Clarke, illustrated by Lara Martina (Nimbus Publishing)

GEC: Portia was one of the first icons I looked up to as a writer. As a teenager, when I was starting off as a poet, I always had her in the back of my mind and would write a poem for her, here or there. In my first book, I had her in a Haiku, and, as I became more invested in poetry and then fiction, I made room for the image or name, Portia White, in my work. She was always with me.

I was approached to do a biography of Portia—a kid’s book that would have illustrations. But a funny thing happened on the way to that book… I could not find my way to it as a children’s book, and the way the book came to me—it had to be in Portia’s voice. I had to let her voice in, through my understanding of her, and let her speak for herself.  

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Katie Vautour is a visual artist and writer published in a variety of literary journals, and though she dabbles in all genres (including fiction, non-fiction and playwriting), her main focus is poetry. An Unorthodox Guide to Wildlife is her debut collection and explores the spaces where humans and other animals meet. shalan joudry is a poet, performance artist and storyteller. Elapultiek is her first play and deals with complex themes of reconciliation, science and the natural environment. The two poets shared a conversation about their work:

shalan joudry: What an interesting idea for a series of poems about such a diversity of wildlife. Where did the concept come from; did you set out to create this as a collection? And how did you observe or learn about these animals?

Katie Vautour: Most of my poems’ starting points come from personal observation or experience. That can range from direct interaction with animals, whether in nature or zoos, as pets, or consideration of documentaries and books.

I’m a visual artist as well. My work is very intuitive, so I try not to think much about it while writing. Sometimes I’ll start writing from a brief stream-of-consciousness concept from an image or sketch or memory, or begin with a very rigid poetry form, depending on what I think the subject matter requires. This often changes during editing. Normally, after an initial draft, I wait a few days, at least, then go back and look over the piece.

It’s then I’ll often print out the text. That’s when I discover that, well, maybe this short story actually wants to be made into several poems, or maybe this elegy should be free verse instead.

So I’ll physically cut out words and sentences and begin to rearrange them on a separate page, until the visual placement appears to suit the subject matter and experience I wanted to capture. At least, as best I can.

That’s what I really love about poetry; I think it’s the most visual and visceral form of writing, in terms of text on the page. Looking back on it, I have no true agenda, other than to write what seemed right, ha.

How about you, shalan? Your inspiration was that you worked on Species at Risk, isn’t that right?

sj: Yes, I watched and counted Endangered Chimney Swifts over the course of four springs for Maritime Swiftwatch. I have also worked with various non-Mi’kmaw biologists and those experiences created a great inspiration for this work.

My years with other ecologists have provided the time for relationship building, to be able to move important conversations deeper and build more trust and understanding. I also wanted to tell this story focusing on a specific species at risk.

We have so many species losing habitat and struggling to survive in the changing landscapes and I wanted to talk about one as an example. The chimney swifts are really amazing to watch as they circle in the sky at dusk to descend together into their communal roost.

There’s a roost in an empty house in downtown Bear River, not far from my community, and I love to watch the swifts in the spring. You end up standing there on the sidewalk with other people in anticipation and then you end up chit chatting about life as you wait. One day I realized that was the backdrop to a story.

You wrote about the clash between animals and humans in your book, sometimes the specific hardships of certain animals. Did you feel that you were being a witness as a writer, or do you have a hope with these…?

KV: I didn’t necessarily set out to write a book primarily about animal and human relationships. I don’t have a particular agenda while writing or making art. I’ve simply always been curious about animals and the natural world, and how humans decide who, or when, or why, they think owns the natural and man-made world, or the creatures within it.

I think it raises some important, if tricky, questions, about the personification of creatures, and how people observe and come to understand (or not) nature and different species, including humans themselves.

Regarding specific poems, one was originally tilted “My Brother and the Hare,” but is now “Military Survival Training.” It does sound particularly specific, which is true, since my brother is in the military and was, in fact, given a pet hare to care for, then had to take it with him into the woods.

My brother wasn’t given any food. You can guess what happened to his poor pet rabbit after a few weeks. I was interested in working with very constricting forms at the time and it seemed the repetition within the sestina served the subject matter well.

shalan, in Elapultiek, Bill, a non-Mi’kmaw biologist, struggles with Nat, a Mi’kmaw character’s, way of doing things. Why do you think there is that resistance among scientists to believe in cultural practices?

sj: There can be quite a clash of worldviews between mainstream science and Mi’kmaw cultural practice; however, I found in real life that there is a growing awareness and openness to what we now call Two-eyed Seeing, thanks to Elders like Albert Marshall where we view the ecological project with both the mainstream science and the cultural eye, without one overpowering the other.

I do understand their hesitancy, though. We’re taught in university science programs about the importance of keeping objectivity. Cultural biases are supposed to remain outside the work.

However, many people realize that cultural bias is indeed within all that we do and how we see the world around us, how we interact and analyze information. Mi’kmaw methodology in ecology is very much about subjectivity and your personal relationship with the topic.

That’s a difficult difference to agree on when you’re sitting on a species recovery team. Although, we find ways to weave back and forth, allowing both the “objective measuring” to take its moment and then allow the subjective cultural practice to have a role as well. I tried to demonstrate that possibility and hope in this work.

Katie, you used spacing as a way to say more with the words, to invoke a different sensation, I believe. How did you decide when and where to move the words around the page?

KV: I think it’s because I’m a visual artist as well that my sense of words on the page are also my way of best representing the meaning.

For example, the poem about the giraffe was inspired (for lack of a better word) by watching a giraffe lean over a lake, in the awkward way that they do, trying to decide whether or not to take a drink. He was looking down like he was staring at his own reflection, the narcissist, so I stretched out the poem vertically down several pages, with a lot of white space, in an attempt to visually reconstruct that image and concept.

So I guess, often the subject dictates the form, and occasionally vice versa.

sj: I’m not a visual artist and so I find that fascinating. Many of my projects are based on words and I find the particular medium for each piece that wants to come into the world.

For example, I’m also a poet but this story of Bill and Nat needed to be a play. The theatre company Two Planks and a Passion called on me a couple years ago to ask me if I would consider writing a play and I was happy to tell them I already had an idea for a play.

It was perfect timing and a great experience. The printed version came about so that others—who weren’t able to watch the play performed—could read the story. I believe that art has a way of finding the right form to move our hearts and minds, often in ways that workshops and speeches can’t.

 


Elapultiek: We Are Looking Towards
shalan joudry
Pottersfield Press


An Unorthodox Guide to Wildlife
Katie Vautour
Breakwater Books

 

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Moore Morrissey: Lisa Moore’s discussion with Donna Morrissey on mysteries deeper than murder

In the first installment of our new Author to Author feature, Lisa Moore (Caught, February) interrogates the tragic terrain of Donna Morrissey’s latest novel, The Fortunate Brother.

Lisa Moore: The Fortunate Brother has been described as a murder mystery. It’s true there is a mystery and the mystery is occasioned by a murder. But this novel feels so deeply embedded in place, circumstance and character, as well as mood, that it seems to me all kinds of mysteries abound. The mystery of grief, the mystery of alcoholism and its hold, and the mystery of love, and its opposite: controlling cruelty. Can you talk about the mystery of the murder here? What did this murder let you explore that might be different from the things you explore in your previous novels?

Donna Morrissey: The thing about murder/mystery is the incredible attention to the slightest detail, as with time – was it 5:30 or 5:35? Who opened the door; did you open the door? Did your father open the door? Were you wearing gloves; was your father; was Kate…?

It was fun and yet terrifying, knowing that every single detail had to be accounted for or the entire thing would collapse. Most surprising is the incredulity of watching inanimate objects take on their own life, following a certain pathway as though they too are characters following an arc of development.  

Lisa Moore: Between the mother and father in this novel, Addie and Sylvanus Now, there is an abiding love, but it is a love that is vulnerable to the threat of Sylvanus’s drinking. These characters have a deep knowledge and understanding of each other. I found it very moving that you have captured the complexity of a love that is at once enduring and also threatens to burst asunder. How did you do that?

Donna Morrissey: This novel is very closely related to my family. Our parents were deeply in love, we watched them kissing and hugging all during our growing up years. Then, with our brother’s death, my mother watched in dismay as she lost her husband too, to the bottle. She fought bitterly for him. And it broke him to hurt her so. But, his pain was too deep … or, he too weak … to break the addiction. But, despite the fighting/ suffering, they still slept with their arms around each other. I always remember that, how they slept holding each other. Please God they’ve found peace now.

Lisa Moore: The physical setting of the community in your novel is very concrete. If somebody blindfolded me and helicoptered me in, I could find my way around. This is a testament to your powers of description. But even more than the clarity of the physical space where the novel unfolds, there are the more intangible elements of the novel: fog and other kinds of inclement weather, darkness, rain, the navigation of moods and the ways in which people can hide in a small community, even while they are out in the open. How do you, as a writer, make all of these things so concrete and present for the reader?

Donna Morrissey: Mm, tough question, Lisa Moore. I think growing up in small places creates an intimacy between us and it. We learn its every mood, every crevice. We can smell the air for the kind of day it’s going to be. Outdoors is where us kids reigned, searching out nooks, crawling under rocks, lying on our backs, facing whatever the wind, sea and sky was heaving at us. I can’t really get a scene right until I can feel it, and to do that I’ve got to get the weather right and the exact spot where the scene is happening. I never have to think hard; it’s all right there. Just – right there!

Lisa Moore: The Fortunate Brother is taut with suspense. Were you conscious of creating that suspense while you were writing, or did the story simply unfold in front of your writer’s eye, with the suspense more or less built-in? Another way of asking the same question: Was the suspense tweaked in the editing, the way one tunes a guitar? By tightening each strand of the story, very carefully, so as not to break the string, until it rings out music?

Donna Morrissey: Nicely put, the guitar analogy. I think of tension as a string that has to be continuously taut. Actually, I can’t move forward if the string loses its tension. That’s how I always know I’m going wrong or the writing is not deep enough, when I lose the tension. So, yes, I am very conscious of it, it is the energy that drives the writing.

Lisa Moore: Your writing is painterly. If I were to pick your painter-twin, I would say William Turner: stumbling colour, light breaking through veils of mist or fog or smoke, atmospheric conditions that can become suddenly luminous. The reader/ viewer understands what she’s experiencing first with her senses, and then logic or reason. If you had to choose a painting or a piece of music that mirrors some of your stylistic concerns in this novel, what would it be?

Donna Morrissey: Jaysus, Lisa, your questions read like poems … my who? Painter-twin?? Ahem, of course, oh yes, absolutely, William Turner! (Quickly googling here) … Ah! Yes, yes, The Painter of Light … light is everything, everywhere, even in our brightest hour we are grovelling for the light…

Lisa Moore: You have mapped out a parcel of territory in your novels as surely as       Faulkner’s “postage stamp.” He has famously said: “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.” Do you feel that way about Newfoundland?

Donna Morrissey: Yes. Yes, I do. And now I have this great quote to validate my feelings. All of our greats – George Eliot, Hardy, Steinbeck – they all wrote about their native soil! And our Newfoundland – what hearts do pound and bleed and boast within its rugged crust! No! I shall never leave here.

Lisa Moore: What’s next for Donna Morrissey? Are you one of those writers who is already drawn arse over kettle into the next book when the previous one is just hitting the shelves? Or are you willing to sit back with a flute of champagne, your breath in your fist, enjoying your rich and textured accomplishment, this beautiful novel, The Fortunate Brother?

Donna Morrissey: Aww, gawd, you’ve a way with words. And yup, arse over kettle into the next one. And it’s taking place in old old Newfoundland on the ice fields and my agent bemoans it can never be popular, too bleak, too bleak … and I say, I can’t help it, my maidy, it’s what’s coming. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you very very much! An interview where the questions are more intriguing than the answers (-:

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An ad from Noah Richler’s NDP campaign

Author and former NDP candidate Noah Richler tells Atlantic Books Today that due to the branding of parties, leaders and candidates, our electoral system is becoming Americanized

Noah Richler is an award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. His book, This Is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada, won the British Columbia’s National  Award for Canadian Non-fiction in 2007, and appeared on many year-end “best-of” lists. In 2015 he ran for parliament as the New Democratic Party candidate in Toronto-St. Paul’s.

His most recent book, The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, examines his foray into federal politics. Born in Montreal, he splits his time between homes in Toronto and Digby Neck, Nova Scotia.

Atlantic Books Today: You mention in the book that when you first decided to run for office you wanted to do so in Nova Scotia. What’s your connection with Nova Scotia?

Noah Richler: My wife and I have been going out to Nova Scotia for 15 years or so. She used to go out as a child. We have often visited a village called Sandy Cove and became very attached to the community in this working fishing village on the St. Mary’s Bay. I go out there and I like to think that I do my best writing out there. We are so committed to it, in fact, that we have bought an old abandoned inn that we would like to turn into what the Californians call a “creativity lab” and we have been inviting writers out there for some time. The whole premise of the Hillcot Centre is basically that if arts and culture and a sense of the past don’t matter in an economically challenged area, do they matter at all? So we’re basically testing ideas we’ve been abiding by our whole lives.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia over the years and the previous MP there, Greg Kerr, was completely absent as a figure, and I did think for a time, probably because of my love of the area, that it would be interesting to walk the tuning-fork shaped riding up the Digby Neck and down the French Shore and try and get elected that way.

But that wasn’t appealing to the party. They wanted me to run in Toronto where they felt most of the news and issues were going to be put forward and they were right about that. It’s not a Toronto-centric comment to understand that as the biggest, most important city in Canada a lot of the battles would be fought here. I didn’t mind that in the end because I think we all need what you might think of as a “safe place” and I have relationships in Nova Scotia that I decided I didn’t need to alter by putting myself forward as so evidently partisan. One day I will write about Nova Scotia and I didn’t want it sort-of tainted by having to plug a party position.

ABT: A point that comes up repeatedly in your book is that today’s politics is largely about brand. Does this come at the expense of individual creativity and initiative among candidates?

Richler: You’re right. Anybody that watches TV or goes to the movies sees countless stories about the individual entering politics and making a difference. Typically the individual is up against some party brass. The terrible thing about that is it’s true. [laughs] So I went in imagining that conversations at the door would be about Canada and about gleaning views and sharing views and having healthy debates. Of course it’s not about that. It’s about gathering data about who is most likely to vote for you.

I first heard that expression, “The Brand,” from Chrystia Freeland, now our Minister of Trade, and that was not interesting to me. I can still remember the sensation in the pit of my stomach. I remember thinking, “That’s not a reason to enter the fray.” One of the gifts of running for the NDP is it’s much more a collection of people, it’s much more of a grassroots party. It’s much more of a variety at the base than the other two principal parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. It’s also less organized.

The irony, of course, is that I was putting forward a brand, calling myself “The Candidate” in my social media campaign videos that I put out and trying to be identified by some kind of shorthand. I know [that] in a more vigilant party, a more controlling party, I probably wouldn’t have been at liberty to do that. We would have had one of Gerald Butts’ minions calling, saying “You can’t do this, you’re running for the Liberals, you run on Liberal red,” and so on.

A number of the revelations [about politics] were ones that shouldn’t have been revelations at all, they were kind of banal in nature. One of them was realizing what a mannequin in the window you are at these rallies that are orchestrated for television.

At first I was hustled along to a room where part of me thought it might be for a chat with [Tom] Mulcair or the people next to him. Instead, you and the twenty candidates that show up are pushed into the background behind Mulcair to stand and look obedient as the press cameras record his answers to journalists. The press conference happens and you’re standing there. All parties demand that.

It actually infers one of the great paradoxes of Canadian politics, which is that we have a parliamentary democracy, which suggests that candidates are elected by constituents in individual ridings, advocating those ridings’ interests. But, and this was particularly evident in the end, as voters we are behaving more and more like our neighbours to the South, with their presidential system, and we vote for one leader or the other.

ABT: The book ends with you being recognized by a student at the Hart House gym as her former NDP candidate. She asks you whether you’re going to run again, and you leave the question unanswered. Is this a matter of you not being sure of your response, or was this a literary device?

Richler: It was a good way to end [the book] but it also made me smile because I’m sure that’s the question most every candidate faces.

I thought “no” for a long time and I wouldn’t do so without the support of my family. I also wouldn’t do so if I didn’t think I was bringing something particular to the table. Next time around I’d have to have a sense of what I was contributing and in truth I feel I’m a 56-year-old white guy and there are plenty of those in Ottawa already. I kind of hope it’s somebody else’s turn. I’d really like to see the NDP be the first [federal] party to have a leader who is not white.

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Mi’kmaq author Theresa Meuse has written a book aimed at teaching children about the Mi’kmaq of Atlantic Canada

Photo by Stephen Brake

The following Q&A is being republished with permission from the author, Maureen Googoo of kukukwes.com, a news website dedicated to covering Indigenous news in Atlantic Canada:

Theresa Meuse’s new book is L’nuk: The Mi’kmaq of Atlantic Canada. In it, Meuse explains to
 readers such things as making baskets and birch bark canoes and using weirs for eel fishing. She also writes about the Mi’kmaw language and the Peace and Friendship treaties signed between the Mi’kmaq and the British Crown.

Meuse, originally from the Bear River First Nation in Nova Scotia, now lives in Windsor Junction near Halifax. She works as the Aboriginal student support worker for three schools in Lower Sackville, NS. This is Meuse’s third published book.

Kukukwes.com: What is this book about?

Theresa Meuse: It’s a book that is actually going to share summaries of little bits and pieces of the Mi’kmaq life before European colonization and of course right up to today. The book actually tries to teach people, not only the non-Aboriginal society, but our culture as well, about the different parts of our history, as well as the different pieces like, for example, our spirituality.

Most of it is based on my teachings and some people may read it and find, “I may not agree with that.” That’s okay. These are just my teachings – it’s just to give a framework for people to start understanding more about our culture.

Kukukwes.com: What inspired you to write a book like this?

Theresa Meuse: I’ve always thought about writing a book about like this and I just never really thought it would happen because I was just so busy with my other stories that come from the sharing circle. Nimbus publishing has published a series of books on different topics like Africville, Sable Island and the Titanic. They’re a cute little reader [series] that is used in the school system. So they asked me if I would be interested in writing one on the Mi’kmaq. And of course it was like, yeah. So that’s how it all came about.

Kukukuwes.com: Why is this book necessary or important?

Theresa Meuse: Well, I think it is clear that there is not a whole lot of relevant cultural information in the school systems. We do have the support of the Department of Education with this book so we’re hoping that at the end of the day, they are going to look at this and agree that it really needs to be in our school systems and get it there. It’s important for the younger generation to start learning at a younger age so they can carry that throughout their whole life.

Kukukwes.com: Why did you write this book for ages 7-10?

Theresa Meuse: It may be for a younger group, but you know what? Even as an adult, if you don’t know much about the Aboriginal culture, it’s going to be a very simplistic, easy way to learn about the culture. So even though we’ve targeted that age group, it’s actually for everybody.

Kukukwes.com: What sort of research did you conduct in order to write a book like this?

Theresa Meuse: I had already done a lot of researching throughout my years working as an Aboriginal consultant. I used to do a lot of cross-cultural training for different groups. I had a lot of information to start with. When it came to specifics like the language, the treaties, certain things like making a birch bark canoe, of course, I had to go to Todd Labrador for that. So I went to a lot of key people like Bernie Francis and Roger Lewis and different (people) who knew a lot about our culture that I really wasn’t aware of. So, I actually learned a lot from writing this book myself.

Kukukwes.com: What was the most interesting thing you found out while you were doing the research?

Theresa Meuse: With someone like Roger Lewis, I talked to him about the eel weirs and he explained to me about how they were set up, especially at Kejimkujik, and how they were used. I was just intrigued by that. Also with Bernie Francis, l learned about the language from his perspective and getting the spelling of the correct words and the meanings. That was really eye-opening. It taught me a few more words that I did not know before. Just the environment, like Todd Labrador with making the canoe, the traditional birch bark canoe, that was probably really eye-opening because I didn’t know a lot about the birch bark. I just thought you went and got it and that was it but there’s really a lot more to it than that. For making baskets, our traditional Mi’kmaq baskets, it was fun. It was really fun getting the pictures for it as well.

Kukukwes.com: What do you want readers to know about Mi’kmaq people by reading this book?

Theresa Meuse: I want them to know that first of all, yes there were struggles but also there were good things about our culture. I want people to get to learn the truth and as much accuracy as possible about the different parts of our culture. Like I said most of it is from a summary perspective. So if nothing else, hopefully it, at least, opens up their eyes to want to learn more. Hopefully it will be the framework for them to go on to learn more.

Kukukwes.com: What sort of impact or impression do you want to leave with readers after they read this book?

Theresa Meuse: I hope that they are encouraged to want to share it with others. They will buy the book and buy it for their nieces, nephews, cousins, children and that they will encourage the schools also to have it in their systems as well.

This article was originally published Dec 22, 2016 at kukukwes.com.

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Year Of The Horse is a memoir of Marjorie Simmins, a 55-year-old woman who experienced a severe horseback riding accident in 2011. As a result, the author could not walk (or even turn over in bed.) What transpires as a result of this accident is both heart wrenching and heart warming. Sandra Phinney conducted this interview with Simmins for Atlantic Books Today:

Atlantic Books Today: When did the notion of writing Year Of The Horse pop into your brain/heart and why?

Marjorie Simmins: It was when I fell in love with the phrase, Year of the Horse, in January 2014, and the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac began. What a great title for a book, I thought. I could write that book, I thought. I am living that book, and that title, I thought. And so I started the first chapter.qa-year-of-the-horse-cover

ABT: The back cover states that “Year of the Horse is about horses, healing and improbable dreams.”  Tell us about improbable dreams … and the importance they play in our lives.

Simmins: I wanted to convey the idea that regular, ordinary people such as myself could dream big, and make the dreams come true. We expected Ian Miller and the late Big Ben to be brilliant at show jumping. We don’t necessarily expect a 55-year-old woman of modest ability and fitness to go in her first horse show in 43 years and come out of the ring covered in red, first-place ribbons. Again, it wasn’t because I was so special. The people who coached me are special, and the horse I rode was gifted. But I gave the effort everything I had, and that counted, too. I believed in the power of my own story. Everyone can.

ABT: Your book is multilayered. One layer that stands out is the parallel between your physical healing from the accident and healing the fractured relationship you had with your sister, who died from an overdose. Do you think this healing would have happened if you had not had the accident?

Simmins: I cannot guess if the emotional healings with my late sister would have occurred without the accident, and without the book thatqa-marjorie-simmins-on-a-horse resulted from that event. All I know is that within the artistic process of writing the book, the conversations began to present themselves. As a person and as a writer, I was a little surprised, a lot curious and a lot wary. I even said to my husband, “I won’t let Karin take over this book. This is my story.”

But once I saw that she “came in peace,” and once I saw an opportunity for even greater peace and healing, I nudged open the door to her voice just a bit wider. When that happened, the exchanges grew richer. It was similar to getting back on the horse. I was only just brave and determined enough to say yes to a reconnection, and to keep moving forward. It was crucial to me that “Karen the memory” knew she was there by invitation only. And on MY terms overall. We’d never had the chance to relate to one another adult to adult. Now we did. It was wonderful. And sad. And very real. I don’t seek her company often. It just doesn’t make good emotional sense to do so. But I can always send her good thoughts.

ABT: You quoted your mother saying, “Don’t ask yourself how you feel, just do it.” In terms of a life lesson, how important is this?

Simmins: There is great, great dignity is the quiet and effective management of overwhelming grief and personal chaos. People do this every day — with deaths, addictions, misfortunes of all kinds. I am not talking about repression. I am talking about the healing power of the mundane and ordinary. What do the British do at all times of pain and confusion — even horror? They make tea.

We all know when we feel so awful we can barely manage our lives. But the people we are in awe of are those who quietly make their way along and even continue to give to others when they have barely anything to give at all. That was my Mum. And yes, it was a great life lesson for me.

ABT: You talk about “memory jewels” helping you build up your courage and the importance of “daring to believe in the power of your own story.” Can you elaborate?

qa-marjorie-simmins-with-a-horseSimmins: Memory jewels are the mental images and emotions I play back to myself when I am in need of courage and a bolstering of resolve. These are happy memories, and because of their retelling over the years, strong and vivid memories. It’s a way of saying, “Look at all that love and magic you had, it’s still here, still supporting and helping you.”

As for believing in the power of your own story — really, if you don’t, who will? There’s so much chatter these days about positive this and that, and how your very thoughts can cause good and bad outcomes. I think carelessness can cause bad outcomes, but not your own thoughts. You are not God. You can help good outcomes come along — by hard work and focus. You can plan for the best outcome, too — again by doing the mental, physical and emotional work that needs to be done to achieve the culmination of “your story.”

Of course being as sunny as you can be attracts sunny outcomes, too. But I hate the idea that one little “bad” thought in my head can harm me. That’s a terrifying way to live.

ABT: Your book raises many issues and themes including: the push-pull of love-hate in relationships; the struggle between being despondent / depressed and being hopeful / positive; the importance of setting goals and working towards achieving them. Why are these significant in our lives?

Simmins: There is always a price for passion. I’ve known for a long time that I felt everything very deeply and could go over edges that would be hard to climb back from. This isn’t necessarily the artist’s way, but it can be, and perhaps is, often.

I no longer apologize for my loving heart, deep capacity for joy and now-occasional dark times. I have better coping skills as a 50+ woman than I did as a teenager or even into my 30s.

These include goal setting. My dad used to talk about putting “good into the spiritual system.” I do this. I take good care of friends, family and my animals. I try to walk lightly through the world, with eyes open to its spectacular beauties; to live mindfully, in the present, and yet with respect for the past and its lessons and memories.

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joe ollmann

An interview with cartoonist Joe Ollmann

“I love to talk about me,” comics creator Joe Ollmann says in an email, when I ask if I can interview him about his book Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People. But it seems to be a moment of passing bravado. When it comes time to set up a conversation, Ollmann asks if email would be OK, so he can “come off sounding brilliant instead of incoherent.” Our whole exchange is self-deprecating — perfectly in keeping with the persona he reveals in his introduction to the book.

Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People includes Ollmann’s short stories collected from two books first published by Insomniac Press: Chewing on Tinfoil and This Will All End in Tears, along with two new stories.

Needless to say, Ollmann’s characters are not well-adjusted, and these are not happy stories. What they do is capture the slow drip-drip-drip of daily life in a way that feels as though we know Ollmann’s characters intimately. There are no grand visions, no big revelations. Yet these characters – a misanthropic, broke ventriloquist, a teen on a failing strawberry farm, a waitress at a diner in a dying northern mining town – stick with you long after you’ve met them.

Atlantic Books Today: Why short stories?

Joe Ollmann: I’ve always been a short story freak. I was an obsessive collector of ghost story anthologies as a young man. Every story I ever wrote as a teenager was more loaded with irony than a can of spinach. I think that’s why all my endings are so vague and unresolved, as an apology for those days. I like the economy of conjuring a lot in very little space, evoking things without showing them by using the right suggestive word or image.

ABT: I felt as though I was reading these little individual bits of memoir or journals. I believed in these characters in a way that I rarely do.

Happy Stories About Well Adjusted PeopleOllmann: People have said that a lot to me, that they really believed these were real people’s problems, which is a great compliment. I don’t know how you do that. I guess the most important element to writing honestly is empathy. Empathy for humanity and for the characters you are writing. I was recently reading Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist, which is brilliant, and what struck me about the book was the fairness she treated all her characters with. They are all complex, nuanced individuals who do some bad things and some redeeming things and it makes for incredible realism.

ABT: Someone I know said he felt as though many of your characters were dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness.

Ollmann: I think that the human condition is varying degrees of undiagnosed mental illness, no? I’m just writing what I know I guess. I am drawn to the loveable sad-sack character and I like to write them at a stage of almost-change.

ABT: I’m really interested in your layout style. Nine panels per page, same size, every page. It seems like it emphasizes the stories as a series of moments: No big set-pieces, no splash panels, no grand gestures.

Ollmann: I use a nine-panel grid almost exclusively. Physically, it works for me as I am wordy and employ a lot narration, which fits nicely in the tall thin panel format. In a larger sense, I think of comics cinematically and the panels are the screen to me. The size and shape of a movie screen never changes. The camera pans or zooms and the focus changes within that uniform shape. That is just what makes sense to me. Perhaps I’m just lazy.

I like it when other people experiment with layout. That works for me as a reader — it just never occurs to me to do it myself.

ABT: How tempted were you to clean up the art in the older stories?

I resisted mostly, except for removing all ill-advised Photoshop motion blurs (shudder), and certain panels where people’s heads were so large it looked like they were wearing comical giant mascot head versions of themselves. I did MASSIVELY rework the lettering, which is always my weakest link in my work. It took weeks! And yes, it was even worse before.The Abominable Mr Seabrook

ABT: Tell me about the book you just finished.

Ollmann: The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, a 300-page graphic novel biography of the Lost Generation explorer/writer William Seabrook. I’ve been researching it off and on for ten years and full-time for five. It will come out from Drawn & Quarterly in January 2017. Seabrook was a really fascinating guy: an alcoholic and a bondage enthusiast and a cannibal once — but I try and tell the whole story past the lurid bullet points of the guy’s life. He lived an incredible life, knew so many famous writers and artists, and was one of the best-selling, highest paid authors of his day. And today, he is virtually unknown.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Budge Wilson

 A Q&A with Budge Wilson

Celebrated author Budge Wilson has written 33 books and received numerous awards and honours, including two Ann Connor Brimer awards, a Canadian Authors Association Lilla Sterling award, and an International Board on Books for Young People Honour Award. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia. Her latest novel is Before Green Gables, an Anne of Green Gables prequel.

Wilson recently published her first book of poetry, After Swissair, and talked to Atlantic Books Today about the events that spurred her to take up this new genre, her writing process, and the legacy of Flight 111.

Atlantic Books Today: Why did you choose to write a book about Swissair Flight 111?

Budge Wilson: I was living on the shores of St. Margaret’s Bay on the Nova Scotia South Shore when it plunged into the ocean a very few miles from my home at 10:31 pm on September 2, 1998. Unless you have experienced such a thing you perhaps cannot imagine the degree to which it invades your mind. The activities you witness, the true and troubling stories that you hear, the weight of 229 deaths on your own stretch of ocean, your knowledge that hundreds of people are experiencing enormous suffering as they look for human remains, comfort the sorrowing, silently walk over the sands and rocks of our own shoreline ‘searching for that they do not wish to find’ — that’s a quote from the book.

All of this is in your conscious mind much of the time. Women from Peggy’s Cove to Blandford cooked wagon-loads of brownies and squares and Nanaimo bars to comfort and thank the workers. We were conscious of the army trucks thundering along the road and the deafening clatter of helicopters over our heads. We were told to go down to our wharves daily and examine the surface of the water and the shoreline and to repeat, and to report anything unusual that we saw. I gradually felt compelled to write about all those things.

ABT: Why did you decide on poetry, a genre that is new to you, and not prose?

WILSON: As time passed and I witnessed the courage and the exhaustion revealed by so many, I wanted people who did not live on the south shore of Nova Scotia to know about it. If you see that much generosity of spirit you want to tell people, you want to celebrate it and somehow or other the use of prose seemed too cold. I wanted to sing their praises and somehow a poem seemed as close as I could get to a song. So even though I had written very little poetry in my life I decided to go that route.

ABT: How did you organize your research?

WILSON: My husband would be laughing hard at this question. So would everyone else who knows me. At first I didn’t organize much of anything; it’s really the story of my life. The experience was all there in front of me. We met families of the victims and we formed deep and lasting friendships. The fishermen told their tales, we saw the vessels large and small come and go. Gradually, almost by osmosis, we came to know the names of some of the key players. Later, I would interview some of them. Mostly I just watched and listened and witnessed the huge effect this disaster was having on thousands, yes, thousands of people.

After Swissair Budge WilsonABT: Was the writing process difficult emotionally and stylistically, and how long did the process take from start to finish?

WILSON: Stylistically, the process worried me somewhat. But very soon I just let the poems come out of me as they seemed to want to come. I [also] had grave concerns … whether the book would harm anyone who was going through post traumatic stress [disorder]. I [eventually] went to two psychologists and asked what they thought. They said if people know what’s in the book, if they’re suffering from PTSD from this crash, they’re not going to open it, they’re not going to read it. That was the main message that came to me, but how could they tell what it was about if I called it “Sea Change,” which I wanted to do … from Shakespeare in The Tempest and all that. But I realized that it didn’t tell you a thing about what was going on in the book so I called it After Swissair.

Emotionally, it was more demanding because when I was working on it I returned to those early awful days when the pain was fresh. Sometimes I would read children’s stories at the end of the day in order to completely change my mind-set. So I didn’t really immerse myself in it for long periods, usually I did most of my writing on it during a ten-day period once a year when I went on an annual writing retreat with some of my writer friends. I interrupted the whole process at one point when asked to write a prequel to Anne of Green Gables, which is a long book, over 400 pages. That and a year of interviews, readings, etc., took a big chunk of the many years that have passed since [the disaster]. But during the last couple of years before publishing I did more disciplined research into facts about the actual events and did more organized interviews. And of course I then did more careful editing of the text, smoothing out some of the rougher bumps but retaining a pretty conversational style where I felt it belonged. In the past sometimes I’ve written a kids’ novel in about two weeks. This book, from first poem to publishing, took about 16 years.

ABT: How do you feel now in the aftermath of book’s publication?

WILSON: I’m, of course, happy that the book is doing well and that it seems to be quite widely read. I’ve received quite a bit of correspondence about it and some of the letters say that they feel it is a healing book. I hope the families find that this is so.

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Pauline DakinAn MFA in creative nonfiction helped Pauline Dakin publish Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir, about a childhood of extreme secrecy

June has turned our thoughts to graduation, the last rite of spring and harbinger of patios, cottages and beaches – all great places to read books. To celebrate, we are feting three recent graduates of King’s College’s new Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction, each of whom has scored a book deal. The program is designed to help writers turn good ideas into completed books, and connect them with agents and publishers who can take said book to a wider audience. The program, now in its second year, has so far resulted in at least six book deals.

Today we chat with Pauline Dakin, who has written a memoir about a most unusual childhood growing up on the run from the mafia, which will be published by Penguin Canada is in September 2017.

Pauline, what were you up to when you decided to apply to the MFA program at King’s? Why did it appeal to you at this point in your career?

I was on my way home from doing a fellowship with the MIT/Knight Science Journalism program in Boston when the email from King’s landed, announcing the new MFA in creative nonfiction. At the time I was a health reporter for CBC National News, and I was always interested in fellowships and other learning opportunities. But this would be a much bigger commitment.

I had recently done a multimedia series for CBC on the mental, physical and emotional impacts of technology and social media on kids. I thought it would be a great topic for a book. Writing a book seemed like a natural progression for a long-time reporter, and I was looking for a challenge. Although I had no idea how much of a challenge it would be, or how rewarding.

Did you already have this project in mind when you entered the program or was it an idea that came up during study or workshops?

My book topic changed during the program, I think partly because there was an atmosphere of remarkable sharing and support among my classmates and professors. It was a safe place to explore a challenging and compelling personal story.

Why was this particular book the one you wanted to write?

Ultimately I decided to write about my family because the time finally felt right to sift through some difficult events I had tried to forget, but which continued to plague me. Both my parents and some other key characters were dead, my children nearly grown and I had some distance — time wise and emotionally — from what had happened.

Essentially, I grew up in an atmosphere of extreme secrecy and palpable fear without knowing why. Twice my mother, brother and I disappeared, leaving everyone we knew behind without saying goodbye and moving thousands of kilometres away. When I was in my early twenties I was told the reason for all our strange behaviour was that we were on the run from the mafia, and that my mother was getting ready to disappear again, into protective custody. That never happened, because she was the victim of a terrible betrayal.

It’s a difficult story to tell and to understand, and I thought that imposing a narrative structure on it might help me to put it to rest and provide a thoughtful way of telling my children about it.

A lot of writers are now going to school specifically to hone and develop their craft. What, based on your experience, are they getting from writing programs that they can’t get elsewhere?

For me, the MFA gave me the structure and discipline (deadlines!) to write my book. It also offered both group and one-on-one critiquing of my work. We were paired with mentors, published writers who provided invaluable feedback and suggestions.

Writing can be a very isolating process but it was less so because of the strong community of my class, teachers and mentors. It was a transformational experience, and a year after graduating many of us still stay in touch and are supporting and celebrating each other’s successes.

Do you have another book planned or in the works yet?

I have some book ideas and themes I’d like to explore. But I have to complete this one first! And after 23 years at CBC I’m starting a new job this fall, as a professor of journalism at the University of King’s College. I’m going to catch my breath and spend some time working on lectures and teaching skills before I launch into the next book project.

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Jen Powley

An MFA in creative nonfiction helped Jen Powley publish a memoir about living with multiple sclerosis

June has turned our thoughts to graduation, the last rite of spring and harbinger of patios, cottages and beaches – all great places to read books. To celebrate, we will be feting three recent graduates of King’s College’s new Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction, each of whom has scored a book deal. The program is designed to help writers turn good ideas into completed books, and connect them with agents and publishers who can take said book to a wider audience. The program, now in its second year, has so far resulted in at least six book deals.

Today we chat with Nova Scotia’s Jen Powley, who has written a memoir that focuses on living with multiple sclerosis. The books is called Just Jen and it will be published by Roseway Publishing, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, in spring 2017.

Jen, what were you up to when you decided to apply to the MFA program at King’s?

I was busy working for the Our HRM [Halifax Regional Municipality] Alliance at the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Halifax. I loved my job, but my multiple sclerosis (MS) affected my lung capacity and my voice; I couldn’t lead meetings anymore. My boss, Mark Butler, was great about acting as my voice but I couldn’t teach him two years of planning school in the ten minutes we had before a meeting.

I applied to do a degree in political science. I wanted to look into why the province amalgamated HRM [from Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Halifax County] and if the goals had been reached.

At the same time, I applied to the new MFA program.

Why did it appeal to you at this point in your career?

I wanted to do something I could pursue at my own pace without needing a rousing voice.

Did you already have this project in mind when you entered the program or was it an idea that came up during study or workshops?

I was going to write a book about amalgamation, but I thought that would have a really limited readership. I wanted to write about all the assistants I had worked with and the different things I learned from them and some of the interesting adventures we had. When I started writing that, I discovered that the story about how I am coping with my condition could mean something to a lot of people who can’t imagine how I survive with the limited function that I have.

Why was this particular book the one you wanted to write?

I don’t know if I wanted to write it at first, but I thought it needed to be written. I have often heard strangers or family members say that they didn’t think they could deal with life as a quadriplegic. I wanted to show them that it is difficult, but it is something that you just do. There is nothing extraordinary about me or my situation; what is interesting is that I refuse to be defined by my condition.

A lot of writers are now going to school specifically to hone and develop their craft. What, based on your experience, are they getting from writing programs that they can’t get elsewhere?

I think you can get it elsewhere. I think you can cobble a lot of the program together with workshops and reading.

What I think you can’t get is the mentorship. The mentors are amazing, patient and accomplished writers who all approach their craft a little differently and come up with different results. But they are all magnificent.

I think understanding that there is more than one way to achieve success is crucial.

Do you have another book planned or in the works yet?

Nothing concrete is planned, but maybe I’ll write the book on HRM.