This is the last post for 2012. Canadian Writers Abroad has now been going for just over a year. Since November 23, 2011, I have posted 45 entries. The site has had over 6,000 views, and a grand total of 65 people are following it. (This number fluctuates as people realize CWA isn’t really about Chelsea football, for example.) The most views on one day numbered 160 on December 27, following the Solstice post with poems by Robyn Sarah. Canadian Writers Abroad’s viewers are all over the world: in the past month, of the 37 countries listed, many visitors are in Canada and the United Kingdom, but in order of descending number of viewers, the list includes the United States, Germany, France, Norway, and Poland. From there we leave Europe for India, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore, Panama and Djibouti — and many more. This seems like the moment to say thank you to readers and contributors alike. Thanks to those who followed, and thanks to those who agreed to become involved. But that’s not all folks. For our readers in this wonderful world, please note that more good things are coming from Canadian Writers Abroad in 2013. First up will be an interview with Kate Pullinger. And that’s all we can promise, because last time I promised Paris, it did not come to pass. Just to say that plans are afoot. May 2013 bring you good books to read.
Posts Tagged ‘Canadian Literature’
A Little Light Reading on my Vacation
Posted: July 25, 2012 in Canada, Debra MartensTags: Canadian Literature, University of British Columbia, Canada Council, University of Toronto Press, Ontario Arts Council, University of Leeds, W.H. New, Northrop Frye, Collected Works of Northrop Frye
cover photo University of Toronto Press
When I was book editor for the Varsity newspaper at the University of Toronto, I reviewed a dictionary. This outraged the Review editor so much that I still remember his reaction — a dare to review Harlequins for my next column. All these years later, and here I am again. What I really want to talk about is an encyclopedia. I was doing research in Ottawa last week, at the public library and at Library and Archives Canada.
The Ottawa Public Library was so cold that I had to prowl from section to section, spending about five minutes with each book and then moving on to another part of the library in the hope that I wouldn’t be under the air conditioning vent. There was no escape. And in the reference section I found an extraordinarily large book for the subject of Canadian literature. When did that happen? When did Canlit go from anthology to a 1000-page encyclopedia? Because I couldn’t sit still with this book for more than ten minutes, I am not here reviewing it. I would love to see a comparison of W.H. New’s Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada (University of Toronto Press 2002) with the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature and the Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. “Cultural plurality” seems to be the main difference. From the promo for the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada:
This up-to-date reference book brings together 300 leading Canadianists to look at literature in Canada from a variety of perspectives. In over 2000 entries, acknowledging Canada’s cultural plurality, the Encyclopedia discusses literature in English and French, and also in such other languages as Yiddish, Spanish, Haida and Cree…
This encyclopedia should not be confused with the Canadian Encyclopedia, which has been around in print from since 1985 and online since 1999. It includes literary entries. The online version is published by the Historica Foundation.
Hold on, the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada came out ten years ago already. Where was I? Oh yeah — abroad. Its publisher, the University of Toronto Press, received support for it from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Brenda and David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia. The press received support for its publishing activities from the Canadian government through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. The Canadian Heritage website says that this program has been “streamlined” and renamed the Canada Book Fund. Hmm. How often does an encyclopedia need an update?
Cover of Archives issue of Canadian Literature
According to one of W.H. New’s other publishers, Oolichan Press, the editor — a poet and academic at the University of British Columbia with many publications — was also the editor of the academic quarterly Canadian Literature for nearly two decades. Oh, and he studied abroad, at the University of Leeds. His work was recognized by the Governor General’s International Award in Canadian Studies. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.
The University of Toronto Press is now commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Northrop Frye. They are publishing The Collected Works of Northrop Frye, which has been 20 years in the making. University of Toronto alumnae may remember him for his Shakespeare lectures. His works continue to be read around the world: Anatomy of Criticism, Fearful Symmetry, The Great Code: the Bible and Literature, for example. Read more about the U of T project here.
Northrop Frye (from Canadian Encyclopedia)
Related articles
- Northrop Frye at 100: Does he still matter? (theglobeandmail.com)
T.C. Haliburton and the Olympics
Posted: June 13, 2012 in Canada, Debra Martens, LondonTags: Canadian Literature, Cultural Olympiad, Haliburton Society, John Stiles, Olympics, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Todd Swift, University of King's College
The London Chapter of the Haliburton Society is joining the Olympics, in the same way that the Cultural Olympiad is running in parallel with the London 2012 Olympic Games. It’s hosting “From Canada’s East Coast to London’s East End – in time for the Olympics!” Four participants are confirmed for this verbal Olympic event at the Leytonstone Library Hall in London from August 1-3, 2012. (No one is paid but authors are able to promote and sell their books at the event.) The library hall holds eighty people and the Society will offer wine and beer
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Two alumnae of University of King’s College in Halifax started the London Chapter of the Haliburton Society in 2006: writer John Stiles and and Chris MacNeil, who is involved with Network Canada. Stiles explains where the notion to start a London branch came from: “The seed of the idea was born when I saw an article in The Times mentioning that Nonsuch Classics were republishing, The Clockmaker or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, as well as its follow-up: The Attaché or Sam Slick in England. [“Dickens’ rival judged fit for return” by Dalya Alberge, The Times: 06 February 2006.] This republication seemed like an event worth celebrating, particularly as the Times article indicated that Haliburton was a rival in popularity to Dickens.”
Established in Windsor in 1884 in honour of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the Haliburton Club’s mission was to promote the knowledge not only of the works of Haliburton but also of Canadian literature. Proud of being the oldest literary society on a campus in North America, today’s Haliburton Society is a literary club at the University of King’s College that meets to read and discuss texts. The Society also organizes an annual essay contest.
There is another connection between Haliburton and the (winter) Olympics: some claim that Haliburton’s “hurling on ice” is proof that hockey’s origins lie in Nova Scotia.
Here’s an excerpt of The Clockmaker: “Politics makes a man as crooked as a pack does a pedlar; not that they are so awful heavy, neither, but it TEACHES A MAN TO STOOP IN THE LONG RUN. … It beats cock fightin, I tell you, to hear the Blue Noses, when they get together, talk politics. They have got three or four evil spirits, like the Irish Banshees, that they say cause all the mischief in the Province—the Council, the Banks, the House of Assembly and the Lawyers. If a man places a higher valiation on himself than his neighbors do, and wants to be a magistrate before he is fit to carry the ink horn for one, and finds himself safely delivered of a mistake, he says it is all owing to the Council. The members are cunnin critters, too; they know this feelin, and when they come home from Assembly, and people ax ‘em “where are all them are fine things you promised us?” why, they say, we’d a had ‘em all for you, but for that etarnal Council, they nullified all we did. The country will come to no good till them chaps show their respect for it, by covering their bottoms with homespun. If a man is so tarnation lazy he wont work, and in course has no money, why he says its all owin to the banks, they wont discount, there’s no money, they’ve ruined the Province. If there beant a road made up to every citizen’s door, away back to the woods (who as like as not has squatted there) why he says the House of Assembly have voted all the money to pay great men’s salaries, and there’s nothin left for poor settlers, and cross roads. Well, the lawyers come in for their share of cake and ale, too; if they don’t catch it, its a pity.”
Thomas Chandler Haliburton, NYPL
Stiles is especially appreciative of Sam Slick’s expressions: “As a native writer from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, I have always been interested in witty and funny sayings and have tried to incorporate Nova Scotian expressions, such as “tighter-than-a-mouse’s-hole stretched-over-a-barrel,” into my works.” He is the author of the poetry collection Scouts are Cancelled and the novel The Insolent Boy, among others. Sam Slick’s sayings are still popular today. Have a look at this list.
Haliburton is also a good example with which to continue the discussion on dialect. Fred Cogswell is the author of the Haliburton entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online: “Haliburton’s use of language added American to Lowland Scots on the list of English variants which a writer could use with a fair chance of winning appreciation and acclaim. In this regard, he paved the way for that great democratic prose epic of America, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Furthermore, his gregarious and sociable nature enabled him to study at first hand the many individual and unusual types which were fostered by the isolation and social freedom of a frontier. At the same time, his knowledge, derived from both reading and experience, of traditional propriety and genteel British behaviour gave him a frame of reference within which to place these excesses. … It is ironic that Haliburton, the arch-tory, should have become the “father of American humour” in the most democratic sense. The success and popularity of Sam Slick established at the same time the vogue of the folk hero…”
Please contact John Stiles if you would like to sponsor or read at this event.
Haliburton’s residence, NYPL
Once You Break
Posted: May 30, 2012 in Canada, Debra Martens, ReviewsTags: BC, book reviews, Camaro 67, Canadian Literature, D. W. Wilson, Doctor Who, Invermere, RCMP
Once You Break a Knuckle by D.W. Wilson has twelve stories and for that simple reason I will make twelve points in my review.
- This book is a must read. But it is not easy to read.
- The main characters are men. Men and boys, sons and fathers. Women are mostly someone to feel guilty about or someone to desire or someone who has run off and ruined your life.
- The title comes from Constable John Crease, who says it to Mitch Cooper: “Once you break a knuckle, he always said, you will break it again.” He says it to Mitch, who is his son Will’s best friend, on the night that he wants Mitch to persuade Will to get the hell out of Invermere. The stories are set in the Kootenay Valley of British Columbia.
- Will Crease is the first person narrator of “The Elasticity of Bone,” “Reception,” and “Don’t Touch the Ground.” The stories hop around in time. The first is when Will’s father beats him at judo just before going to Kosovo and the second is about his father’s return — about his father and his relationship with his father. The third is about bullying when they are young teens, and how his friend Mitch takes revenge on the bullies. In the Will stories, the repeating theme is that Will must get himself out of “Inverhole” and not waste his life as his RCMP father did. There is no mention of Will’s mother. Will’s stories are peppered with slogans on shirts, mugs, caps. Too much pepper for me.
- Two of the stories are interesting or confusing, depending on your alertness. When Mitch takes the stage in the third person story, “The Millworker,” we learn that Mitch, the son of the renowned naturalist Larry Cooper, has been encouraged to work with his hands. He is married to Andrea, whom he seems to have cheated on, and has a son of 17 who gets in trouble with the law. And the law is Constable Will Crease. Then Mitch tells another story, in first person: “Once You Break a Knuckle,” a story about the younger Mitch helping Will’s dad find Duncan, a lovelorn kid their age. Will is home from university and Mitch is building the house that is falling apart in “The Millworker.” Wilson, then, is giving us the two versions of Will’s future. In “The Millworker,” he marries Mitch’s sister, Ash, and becomes an RCMP Constable, and no longer speaks to Mitch. In the second, John Crease has a word with Mitch, and Mitch has a word with Ash, and they conspire to keep Will from his simple desire (girl, job) so that he can pursue his dream of going West to study writing.
- There are other characters in the book, including the non-human ones of cars.
Camaro, http://www.camaros.net
Every car is named. Interestingly, this kind of naming was mentioned as common to stories by boys in the Guardian yesterday. A cobalt 67 Camaro is restored by Bellows in “Sediment” (another story of bullying). In “Dead Road,” the narrator, Duncan, talks about Animal Brooks’ cobalt 67 Camaro. Even someone as car clueless as I am can see that the car helps define the character. Cool Camaros for tough guys, trucks for electricians and so on. This point is perhaps best made when Mitch’s brother Paul, who (possibly) shows up as the kid and electrician in training in “The Persistence,” has made for himself a prosperous business in a later story: “Mitch spotted his brother’s truck, a forty-five-thousand-dollar enviro-friendly bio-dieseled no-footprint half-ton.” Mitch and Paul don’t have much time for each other.
- By this time you might be thinking of Raymond Carver and Hemingway and whatever macho writer springs to your mind, but I am thinking of Alice Munro. Three examples. First, his use of voice. Here is Will’s father speaking, “Promotions, he told me, are a lot like blowjobs: easy to get if you’re willing to go somewhere dirty.” Second, for his fresh, short descriptions: “a beaver-toothed kid” and “earthworms he’d dangle like a set of keys.” Third, for the emotional punch. The last line of “Persistence”: “All the problems could wait.” Will seeing his father in pain: “…when I stood helpless in front of him, hands tensed at my sides, his eyes squinched shut and his jaw clamped and Jesus, what had this done to him.”
- Old man, rednecks, shithole, hicks, gun-toters, goody-goody, blitz – I read this language with envy. It is much easier to play it safe and use only words everyone can understand. Speaking of which, what is a “commie hat”? What is this recurring use of the word “gamed” (“Winch’s dad gamed with the cabbage-like smell of pulp”)? What does it mean to “never have the stones”? “She’s gone and cleaned” (not referring to housework)? Maybe using local language does have its pitfalls. What do you think?
- Kudos, though, for pushing “superhero” and “Vietnam” into verbs.
- Hey, Winch’s dad is watching Dr Who in “Valley Echo.”
- It took me a long time to read this book. I read Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting and Nick Hornby’s Slam while reading Once You Break a Knuckle. In comparison, they were easy to understand, fun to read.
- This book delivers a jolt much like the one you get coming out from shopping to the parking lot or car park and you see a guy with a baseball cap on backwards in spattered jeans standing with his hand on the door of a pick-up truck, and you’ve got your new office shoes in your hand and are looking forward to a bath to start the weekend, and the guy is shouting fuck phrases at a woman in a track jacket with a cigarette between her fingers as she unlocks her rusty car, a car that she might have picked up when your grandmother died and her things were all sold off. You watch them as your hand fumbles for the keys to your imported car. And then a smoker by the door of the building shouts at them to take it somewhere else and while they frown at him, you pass between them, through the fuck-smoked air, feeling as if you have gone out the wrong door and entered the Canada that doesn’t listen to the CBC. The guy gives up on the woman and calls to you and invites you for a couple beers. And you really miss the “of,” so you shake your head No and mutter to yourself, “a couple of beers.” Reading this book is like getting in the half-ton with him.
If you’ve read this far, then you might like to read about Wilson’s next book, Ballistics, here.
Le Mas Blanc and Isabel Huggan
Posted: May 1, 2012 in France, InterviewsTags: Anduze, Canadian Literature, Huggan, Humber School for Writers, Montpellier, the Hungry Novelist, writing mentor, writing retreat
I am happy to be able to offer you this interview with Isabel Huggan about the writing retreat she has recently opened at Le Mas Blanc. A Canadian writer of fiction, essays and poetry who now lives in France, she is the author of the collection (half memoir, half story) Belonging: Home Away from Home (2003), You Never Know (short stories, 1993), and the book of stories that launched her fiction career, The Elizabeth Stories (1984). She was awarded the Charles Taylor Literary Non-Fiction Prize in 2004 for Belonging.
She has been teaching writing for over 35 years, and on the staff of the Humber School for Writers since 1988, for which she earned the Calliope Award for Outstanding Writing & Teaching, from Humber College in 2003. She has given writing workshops not only in Canada but Australia, France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. About Isabel and her retreat at Le Mas Blanc, Antanas Sileika wrote on the Humber blog: “She has always been one of the most gentle and caring teachers in the Humber program, so I can’t imagine anyone ever leaving the place without having learned something.” Here are more details about her career.
I met Isabel at a meat counter in Nairobi, Kenya. Well, ok, we’d met briefly when I was taking a writing class with Leon Rooke and she was teaching another group, at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, and I found out she was in Kenya. So I had my ears perked for an Ontario accent. To this day I am glad I plucked up my courage to talk to her when she joined me at the meat counter. From then on, we went for walks in Lone Tree Estate. I remember a party she gave herself, of the women friends she had collected during her three years in Kenya – laughter, warmth, and great food. The following are her written answers to my written questions.
Isabel Huggan in the Cevennes
Why did you decide to set up this retreat?
Around a decade ago, my husband Bob created an office on the top floor of a small stone barn that sits across the driveway from our house, for in his retirement he continued to work as an international development advisor and teacher. My own work space in the house is a comfortable book-lined study. When my husband died in 2011, I had the option of moving my office to the barn, but I couldn’t imagine myself working in that space, somehow… But I thought about how other people might use it. During our years in Belleville and Ottawa, both Bob and I had often gone off separately for a few days of intense and concentrated work, usually in a summer cottage: thus it struck me I might provide such a place for others looking for solitude and separation from their ordinary lives. Of course, I first thought of writers, but have since opened the concept to include translators, editors, artists, composers, and musicians – anyone with the need for privacy, and nothing to do but zero in on whatever project demands attention.
For how many years have you been living there?
Bob and I left Canada in 1987, spending three years in Nairobi, and then three years in Montpellier, and then Manila, where we stayed from 1993-98. During that period, on a return visit to France, we bought this old house, Mas Blanc, and during several summers worked to renovate it so that it was habitable by the time we moved in the spring of 1998. (I write about this in my memoir.) So in answer to your question, I’ve been here for 14 years, longer than I have ever lived in any other house. This is home.
What have you written in Le Mas Blanc?
I finished the last chapters of the memoir Belonging: Home Away From Home while living here, and I have also written several poems and essays, published in literary journals (such as The New Quarterly and The Malahat Review) and magazines (such as Home & Garden and Canadian Geographic).
What are you working on now?
I’m putting together a collection of related poetry and personal essays, as I like very much the way that these two genres have made friends with each other in the past few years, and show themselves to be entirely compatible within one book-cover. I thought the same for the blending of memoir with short stories when I took the chance with Belonging, so I hope this works as well.
What do you like about this place?
I’ve been here a long time, and so it feels wonderfully familiar, even though the topography and geographical features are not at all like the pastoral landscape of my childhood in south-western Ontario. This paysage reminds me in many ways of Australia in its rocky dryness, and as I am very much attached to Tasmania, but can’t possibly find a way to live there, this similarity gives me great comfort.
The barn that houses the upstairs room.
How long has it taken to get the barn renovated and the retreat set up? Who helped you?
As I said earlier, there already existed an office-space/guest room in the barn, which was large and bright, and had a bathroom with a shower ensuite (on the same level). So it was only a matter of redecorating, but nothing “major” in terms of renovation. I have been here long enough now that I know people who can help with such a project, and so it went along smoothly, although the hardest part for me was making decisions about items such as microwave ovens (I’ve never liked them and don’t have one, but it is an essential item in this bedsitting-studio space).
Who is it for? Are there any requirements, such as publication or manuscript in progress, or is it simply: If you can pay, you can come? Does it include reading or your comments on work? The only requirement is that you are an artist, of whatever variety, published or not, recognized or not, just starting out or in mid-stream, but above all you will be someone with a creative spirit who needs a place to “be alone to concentrate for a while.” If you are a writer, I am here to help with editorial comment, but as I must make my living in this way, I will charge for time spent reading and discussing your work. (For example, close reading of a text with line-editing corrections, €50 per hour; reading with a general overview commentary, €35 per hour, light reading prior to conversation, €30 per hour. Time spent depends on your needs and the size of your project.) [To see how exigent she might be, check her Humber blog.] If you are in a discipline that does not connect with mine, then your time here will be entirely yours to spend, without need of my counsel or mentoring services. If you pay – and if you are coming to work – then you can come. I do not want to open my private world of Mas Blanc to holiday-makers, only to those who are in some way engaged in productive, creative activity. Having been already published or recognised in your field is not a requisite.
Will there be more than one writer there at a time? No.
Is it easy to find? It is not at all difficult to find, and directions will be given if a booking is made. Mas Blanc is part of Tornac, which is actually not a village but a “commune” – that is, a collection of farms and houses over a large area of several kilometres. Tornac is close to Anduze, and only 45 minutes from Nimes and an hour from Montpellier.
What else is there to do? Can one clear one’s head by long walks or is one restricted to the barn?
There are lovely walks from the house, depending on the kind one wants. The “hill walk” takes about an hour and has some steepish bits, but it provides a lovely path through a pine forest at the top of the ridge. The “flat walk” takes less than an hour and goes through vineyards down to a crossing over the little river and then back home along a country road. The “village walk” goes up through the old stone houses in a part of Tornac known as “Soulier” and is a pleasant half-hour or so. And the “chateau walk” takes you through Soulier over to the hill on which sits the long-ruined chateau de Tornac, which presents you with a fabulous view down across the vineyards on one side and over toward Anduze and the Cevennes mountains on the other. On the other side of Anduze there is a very well-known park called “La Bambouserie,” in which you can spend many happy hours wandering the pathways through bamboo of every description, including an exquisite Japanese garden with ponds and lovely places to sit and dream. And if you have a vehicle, then driving up into the Cevennes is a “must” as the marked walks there are beautiful – I have a photo of a typical view on the website.
How much does it cost? How did you arrive at this price? Does it include meals?
The room at the retreat
I am charging €50 euros per day for the space itself, which is the usual low-end sum that one pays here for an overnight or weekend stay in a “gite.” Seven nights is €350 for the space, which will help me cover costs for electricity, water, etc. I provide all the food you will need for your two daily meals – breakfast and a simple lunch – and the cost for this is €50, so the final sum is €400. Everything is, of course, negotiable, if the length of time is less, or more, and if the food required is less, or more. For people coming without a car, I’ll meet their plane or train, and will provide an evening meal (this adds €100 for the week, a reasonable expenditure for three-course meals with wine). If people drive here, they may well prefer to dine at one of the many cafes or restaurants in Anduze or other nearby towns and villages. [If you are wondering about her cooking, here is her interview with The Hungry Novelist.]
Do you use retreats? Why would you recommend this one?
As I said earlier, I’ve always found it beneficial at some stage in my own writing to “go off somewhere” and leave the world behind. I’d recommend Le Mas Blanc because from the moment you turn around the walls of the monastery on your way here, you have had to slow down, and by the time you cross the tiny bridge to the road that brings you past the olives trees on the way to the house, you are in first gear. You have entered a new way of being. There is nothing to disturb you here, except the music of birdsong in the morning and the racket of frogs in the evening. It’s a heavenly place, which is why I am staying here myself.
What is nearby? If a writer were planning a vacation that ends with a retreat, for example.
I do address this to some extent on the website, so just to say here that I would happily provide some advice if asked. The Mediterranean is an hour away, and the mountains are an hour away in the other direction. Cities such as Nimes and Montpellier are close, as well as the cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, and Carcassonne. And there are many charming towns, such as Uzes. It’s just a matter of interests and inclinations and time.
Go to the Le Mas Blanc website by clicking here. Find her blog by clicking here.
Isabel is always happy to take her visitors off to go wine-tasting. Here she is at her favourite vineyard, Le Grand Chemin.
D.W. Wilson
Posted: April 10, 2012 in Canada, United KingdomTags: Canadian Literature, D. W. Wilson, Invermere, Kootenays, University of East Anglia, University of Victoria
Remember this aside from my “Masterclass”? (Hmm, University of East Anglia rings a bell. Ah yes, that’s where the Canadian who won the BBC short story competition was studying. Who was he?)
Wilson receiving BBC Short Story prize
Well, I found him, and met him in Cambridge. He goes by D. W. Wilson and he did indeed win the BBC National Short Story Award in 2011 for his story, “The Dead Roads.” Wilson’s first collection of stories, Once You Break a Knuckle, was originally published by Hamish Hamilton Canada/Penguin Group, and is being released in the UK by Bloomsbury on April 12, 2012.
How did a young writer from Invermere B.C. end up here, teaching writing to the English? (more…)
Writing Workshop with Sarah Selecky
Posted: March 27, 2012 in Canada, Hawaii, Story is a State of Mind, WorkshopsTags: Alison Gresik, Canadian Literature, creative writing, Danforth Review, online writing workshop, Story is a State of Mind
Sarah Selecky
What do you do when you are writing in a place where no one knows you, or you don’t know the language, and you don’t have a writing group or a mentor to urge you on? You listlessly eye that writing guide you unpacked some time ago. You’re stuck. No, worse than stuck. Writing has started to feel like pushing a train back into its tunnel. If you’re in the wilds of nowhere, you could look to the stars for help. If you’re in a city, and have access to the internet, then help is at hand.
Sarah Selecky is the author of the short story collection, This Cake is for the Party, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Carribean.
She gave her first creative writing workshop from her living room in Victoria B.C. in 2001. She has studied with and been influenced by Natalie Goldberg, Lynda Barry and Zsuzsi Gartner, among others. She studied writing at the Humber School for Writers and the Banff Wired Writing Program. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia’s Optional-Residency program.
“I started teaching because I wanted to talk about writing as a contemplative craft, and I couldn’t find a writing workshop anywhere that taught me everything that I wanted to learn. Now I live in Toronto, and I teach locally and abroad. My classes are a unique hybrid of craft and process….” That’s from Sarah Selecky‘s website. In an interview in The Danforth Review, she says her e-course started as a wish, to get around the problems of time zones and demands on a writer’s time: “I created this course to teach people how to repair their relationship to writing. It’s for writers who know they’re good, or at least have a feeling that they’re good at writing, but they fear doing it anyway. Or they resist it. … It’s designed especially for short fiction writers, but any writer can benefit from the methods.” (12 January 2012)
Of the various online options for writing courses, Sarah Selecky’s short story e-course, Story is a State of Mind, is the most flexible. You work through the seven lessons at your own pace. Each lesson is presented in audio, video and text modules. See Notes for her video introducing the course. It doesn’t mean the course will be easy or soothing. As Selecky says on her website: “I make writers work hard. I kick them out of their patterns and grooves, get them to take risks with style and content, help them recognize and eradicate their own clichés, boilerplate story lines, and other less-than-excellent habits. I want to read stories and voices that I’ve never read before.” Looking at the course content, I see some familiar terrain, such as dialogue and character, but also much that is new to me (lily pads?). If you are not sure you want to pay $250 for seven lessons (with unlimited access, you can do it as often as you wish), then read Alison Gresik’s website review of the first chapter of the course.
It must be working. Launched in December 2011, the e-course has already had over 100 participants. If you are reading this and are one of those participants, please click the balloon above and give us a comment on what you thought of the course.
I first learned about this course in Alison Gresik’s “Hours for Art” interview with Selecky, when Selecky mentioned escaping to Hawaii for some quiet time to work. It turns out that Hawaii was but one stop on a journey of several months that included Indiana, Florida, San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for a writer’s conference, and another conference in Chicago. But it was in Hawaii where she worked on the e-course for two months.
The view from Sarah Selecky's desk in Hawaii
The last leg of her journey was a month in Berkeley, California, where she settled into working on her own fiction. “Now that I’m in California, however, I have started to write again. I am so grateful to be at this new desk, one that I haven’t ruined yet with email, tax returns, or business of any kind (other than fiction business). I sit in front of a window that looks out into a blooming California garden, and I have found a new perspective. I am finally ready to renovate two old stories and see where they can go this year. There is no computer allowed at this desk: only pens and paper.”
Finally, from her website again: “I write. I take time off regularly, go where nobody will find me, and focus on the one thing I need to do the most. And I advise you to do the same.”
Karyn Huenemann and Sara Jeannette Duncan
Posted: February 9, 2012 in India, LondonTags: Canada's Early Women Writers, Canadian Literature, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, Karyn Huenemann
Karyn Huenemann is the first contributor (other than me) to Canadian Writers Abroad – and her article makes clear why she should be. She has lived in England, India, California, Paris and Boston. While in England and India, she was on the trail of Duncan. Having returned to Canada, she is the project manager of Canada’s Early Women Writers (CEWW) at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC (ceww.wordpress.com).
CEWW is an ongoing project, run by Dr. Carole Gerson, to create an online database of all Canadian women who published—in any genre, in any forum—before 1950. CEWW is one of the seed projects for the larger database project, the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC), run out of the University of Alberta, and headed by Dr. Susan Brown.
—DM
Being a Victorianist, studying in Ottawa in 1988, nothing seemed more natural than to take a course in Early Canadian Female Novelists offered at the University of Ottawa by the late Professor Lorraine McMullen. Imagine my surprise when one of the novels offered had seemingly nothing to do with Canada: The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib was a novel of British India, published in London in 1893. It turned out that this novel was written by one of those myriad of authors who—for whatever reason, although most often the inability of the Canadian publishing industry to support its authors—had left Canada for warmer or more lucrative places.
My Master’s degree achieved, I eventually followed Sara Jeannette Duncan to London, and then to India itself…. While complications in pregnancy made me cancel my trips to Calcutta and Simla from our home in Bangalore, in England I was more lucky. I dutifully read through Marian Fowler’s almost painfully familiar biography of Sara Jeannette Duncan, Redney(1983), gleaning from her research and other supporting documents what I could about Duncan’s travels and residences.
Karyn Huenemann slideshow
Living in Windsor and studying at the University of London gave me ample opportunity to traipse the streets of London and its suburbs, A-to-Z in hand, trying to photograph the homes Duncan lived in, imagining her writing Cousin Cinderella (1908) or Two in a Flat (1908) as the sounds of London streets wafted through her windows. Unfortunately, many years, two children, and three jobs later, when I returned to academia and Sara Jeannette Duncan, I discovered that on only some of the photos had I written addresses. What sort of researcher makes such a mistake? I was appalled at my oversight, and can offer no excuses.
Karyn Huenemann slideshow
I do remember walking for what seemed like miles, up through winding streets in the north to get a photo of what I later thought was Newington Rectory… but the truth is lost in the mists of time, at least for a person now living on the West coast of Canada!
—Karyn Huenemann
Related articles
- Poem by Duncan (Canada’s Early Women Writers)
Sara Jeannette Duncan
Posted: January 12, 2012 in Debra Martens, India, LondonTags: Canadian Literature, Everard Cotes, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Sara Jeannette Duncan
It’s time to talk about writers who lived abroad. I want to start with a Canadian writer who left home to write and never moved back. She was given the name Sarah Janet Duncan, but she didn’t write under it, choosing instead Sara Jeannette Duncan, at times using her married name Mrs Everard Cotes, and the pen names Garth Grafton or Jane Wintergreen or V. Cecil Cotes.
Sara Jeanette Duncan, Library and Archives Canada (no. 3531454)
Best known in Canada for her novel The Imperialist, she began her career by writing about the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial exposition in New Orleans for a Canadian newspaper. She went on from there to write a newspaper series about a trip around the world, which she later rewrote as a novel. During that trip she met Everard Cotes, who worked in India. After they married, she settled there and continued to write both journalism and fiction. She also retreated to her house in London from 1915 onward. She and her husband retired to Ashtead, Surrey, in 1921, where she died a year later. Her death has been attributed to her chronic lung problems (tuberculosis, emphysema) and was possibly from pneumonia.
I read her collection A Pool in the Desert while I was in India (for three years, long enough to exacerbate my own lung problems), so it seems fitting that in London I should read her fiction set here. I went to my local library and requested Cousin Cinderella; or, a Canadian girl in London (1908) and the earlier A Social Departure: how Orthodocia and I went around the world by ourselves (1890). I didn’t really expect the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea library to find them for me; I expected to be directed to the British Library or the London Library. But the books have arrived, as reprints, Cousin Cinderella by General Publishing and A Social Departure by Nabu Public Domain reprints.
Although Duncan’s house in London was in Chelsea, she is not listed in the index of London’s blue plaques (mounted on buildings to identify which important personage once lived there). Because one purpose of this website is to create a record, I want to find where she lived and put up a photo of it. The question now is: how do I go about finding her address?
Not that she would approve of such a quest. In An American Girl in London, she lets the American narrator make mockery of this desire to record a life by identifying it with an abode. A friend shows her Dr. Johnson’s house: “I took one long and thoughtful look a the yellowish house at the end, and tried to imagine the compilation of lexicons inside its walls about the year 1748, and turned away feeling that I had done all within my personal ability for the memory of Dr. Johnson.” (An American Girl in London, A.L. Burt Company, N.Y. p. 181.)
Walls
Posted: November 23, 2011 in Austria, Debra Martens, East AfricaTags: Canadian Literature, Flakturm, literature, walls
I chose this gritty template for Canadian Writers Abroad because during ten years of living outside of Canada I found that I took pictures of walls as much as scenery. I mean not only the walls that sheltered me but also the walls whose doors I sought. The long walls of the narrow streets of Lamu, behind which life went on in interior courtyards. The mud walls of homes in Kakamega. The whitewashed walls in residential neighbourhoods of New Delhi. The art-deco walls of Viennese apartment buildings. The walls that prevented me from seeing where I was going and along which I still get lost.
The photo to the left was the view from my apartment in Vienna. It shows less than half of the Flakturm that sheltered the playground in Arenberg Park. Every day for four years I would look out the living room window at the ten stories of thick concrete walls, which emanated a dank odour. A multi-purpose building, it served primarily as an anti-aircraft tower or flak tower, with military beds, a hospital, a bomb shelter and in the basement, a munitions store. Built by the Nazis to last 500 years, it cannot be destroyed. Every day several times a day, this wall forced me to remember the Second World War.
You have already guessed that this talk of walls is, well, a wall that I am throwing up around my real point. People can erect invisible walls around themselves, and groups of people erect hidden walls against foreigners. Customs, language, rules, history. Difference fascinates us, but it can also keep us out. The trick is to find the way in.
-Debra Martens
Eyes on the world - these holes are in a wall of the Falkenstein ruin in Austria.
