Tag: fiction

A Connected World—By Christopher DiRaddo

Montreal’s gay, lesbian, and feminist bookstore, L’Androgyne, closed for good in 2002. At the time, I knew I was going to miss it, but even now, some seventeen years later, I still feel its loss.

I don’t remember the first time I went inside, but I remember being nervous about it. Who would see me go in? And what would I find there? I still remember its address: 3636 St. Laurent. I remember its smell too: the books, the paper, the glue that held everything together. The place was small, a mere 1,200 square feet, with three rows of white bookshelves all built by hand. It was here where I discovered my favourite authors, where I first picked up copies of books by Armistead Maupin, Ethan Mordden, Sarah Schulman, Andrew Holleran, and Sarah Waters.

It was also here where I found community. Where I made friends—France, David, and Johanne—all working behind the counter. I’d visit several times a week, if I could, leaving not only with books or magazines but with stories about real people’s lives and the places and events and collected history that were all a part of this exciting community I had just found. Before the Internet, a city’s LGBTQ bookstore was where you got your news. It was where you could pick up queer publications like Fugues or Xtra or the Guide, flyers for parties, maps for marches. And it was also a place where you could develop a crush among the stacks, where you could smile and flirt and finally meet others who shared your interests.

Walking down the aisles, I’d sometimes imagine my own book on the shelves. At that time, I’d been writing for years with no indication that anything would ever come of it. How great would it be, I’d think, to see a book I had written alongside these legends (under D, somewhere between Delaney and Donoghue)? Sadly, I never got to know that feeling. By the time my first book was published, L’Androgyne was twelve years cold in the ground.

I’m sure many of you can relate to losing your favourite bookstore. L’Androgyne was not the only one to lose out as the world moved online. For the LGBTQ community, though, there was a moment when the arrival of the Internet held such promise. It meant that people could have more access to resources and information (especially those who didn’t live in urban areas). It was a place where we could congregate easily, expand our networks, and make connections. Yet something authentic was lost. Gone was the human touch, the spontaneity, the chance for discovery, the surprise of the unknown. Sure, I could Google “new gay fiction” if I wanted to know what to read next. I could add “booklover” to my dating profile. But gone were the deep conversations, the quiet browsing, the raucous laughter, the looking for friends, lovers, and other limited editions in the aisles.

When my book finally came out in 2014, I was disappointed there wasn’t a home for it. I did a few public readings in straight spaces, but rarely sold copies. There was no forum in Montreal for me to introduce my book to my community. And it wasn’t just me. All around I was seeing Canadian writers continuing to publish LGBTQ books and they too struggled to reach an audience.

There was no forum in Montreal for me to introduce my book to my community.

So, I decided to start my own reading series. I figured, if Montreal didn’t have an LGBTQ bookstore, I’d make one—at least for a few nights a year. Now, every two months, the Violet Hour takes place in a bar in Montreal’s gay village. And not just any bar, but Stock—a gay male strip club. Why a strip club? Because I wanted a place with a different energy, one where writers could feel like they could take risks with their work. I also wanted to host something in the village because that neighbourhood too had suffered from the shift online and I wanted to bring back some culture to the place that had given me life in my twenties. Above all, I wanted my series to be more like a party, more social. I wanted there to be music and drinks and fun and laughter. Like it was back in the good old days of L’Androgyne. I wanted to unite LGBTQ booklovers in one room and get them talking—about their favourite books, about their favourite writers, about themselves.

To date, there have been more than twenty events and more than a hundred writers who have taken to the stage. That’s hundreds of new connections made between writer and audience. Montreal may not have a dedicated English-language LGBTQ bookstore anymore, but I’d like to think the Violet Hour is the next best thing. And I hope, as long as this country continues to publish LGBTQ literature, that I can provide it with a stage.

Christopher DiRaddo is the author of The Geography of Pluto and president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. You can find out more about future Violet Hour events here. The next event is at the Montreal Fringe Festival on June 5, 2019 at 6 p.m. (Mainline Theatre, 3997 St. Laurent).

Photo credits: France Désilets (header banner), Paul Specht (headshot)

May 21, 2019
Writing about Not Writing—By Sivan Slapak

Is a writer who isn’t writing still a writer? And if so, for how long a stretch? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself—actually, tormenting myself with—for the last year or two.

Even at my most active I’ve never had a writing routine. I wish I could say I’ve always woken up to meet my muse at 9 a.m. each morning. Nevertheless, I’ve somehow managed to amass material over the past few years, with a collection of interwoven short stories as the intended goal.

When I began crafting some stories about five years ago, I didn’t call myself a writer. The verb was okay: “Writing a bit,” but not the noun. I’ve kept journals since childhood, met in writing groups since my teens. Then came academic papers, grant writing gigs, and so on. So, I’ve been engaged in the act in various ways throughout my life. But “writer”? It seemed pretentious, or premature at best. Like the difference between having an artistic spirit, and creating art.

“Despite some early successes, I found it challenging to accept, and introduce, myself as a writer.”

Despite some early successes—getting published, shortlisted, even awarded (!)—I found it challenging to accept, and introduce, myself as a writer. (“I just write a bit!”) But with time, I allowed myself to settle into the identity. In some ways this has calmed other questions about my place in the world, when I, like so many of us, feel I’ve made a life of living on the seams. For a writer, that’s not a bad spot to be.

But what does a writer who hasn’t been writing call herself? (“Lost,” when she’s panicking.) I know we’re supposed to believe that lulls and blocks are part of the creative process (I’ve read The Artist’s Way, too) and that resting and inputting—reading, seeing art, living life without notating it—is an incubation period. And I suppose I do essentially think that. Yet at some point this ‘incubation’ begins to feel more like stagnation, and the idea of ‘writer experiencing a lull’ is harder to buy than ‘not a writer anymore.’ Especially when the pause becomes longer than the writing that preceded it.

“I’ve noticed I easily choose working on others’ projects over my own, even when I don’t have to.”

Of course, there are lots of reasons for a writing hiatus. The simple ones are limits of time and energy. For me, I’ll say work: over the years it’s mainly been in the community and arts sectors (to my joy), often as a coordinator or editor. I love these roles and they offer flexibility, but I’ve noticed I easily choose working on others’ projects over my own, even when I don’t have to. Before I had a job, my blocks were caused by the paralyzing anxiety of NOT having enough work, or not having work I like. So, there’s always something. And there’s always the hauling undertow of social media to compound the issue. In any case, like many writers I know, I struggle to prioritize writing time, and the obvious excuses are less complicated than facing other, less conscious motives. Whatever the reasons, the longer I go without writing, the more miserable I feel.

What about my short story collection? What about being a writer?

In recent years I’ve hung on, by my fingertips, to the fragile thread of a notion that I’m still a writer. An unproductive one, but still.

Thankfully, I seem to be slowly emerging from my dry spell, and I’ve been looking back on what’s kept me holding on: I have to credit the writing group I’ve been part of for several years. I haven’t submitted in ages, but I’ve stayed in as a reader and tried to be an active presence in our little community. Their support has buoyed me.

“I seem to be slowly emerging from my dry spell, and I’ve been looking back on what’s kept me holding on.”

I also took two QWF workshops. I didn’t produce new work, but it gave me a chance to revisit some pieces and say, “Hey, this isn’t horrible!” (And have peers say similarly encouraging things.)

This year I began writing daily morning pages, which put a pen back in my hand and is as close to a routine as I get. In the winter, riled up about a political issue, I wrote an op ed, which was published. Soon after, so was an old story I’d dusted off. I attended a ‘Shut Up and Write’ session in a QWF writer’s house. And just recently I met the criteria to have my “Literary Writer” profile approved by the Canada Council for the Arts. Bureaucratic recognition though it is, I felt grateful to receive it.

So, there have been steps, some small and some more significant, in the realm of writerly activity. Not (yet) my completed short story collection. Or even another short story. But something, maybe more than I thought. Enough movement to feel reassured that while I’ve been fretting over stagnation versus incubation, my writer-self has kept busy.

Sivan Slapak is a writer working in the arts and culture sector of Montreal. Her short stories have won and been shortlisted for fiction awards, and appeared in publications such as The New Quarterly, Montréal Serai, JONAHmagazine, and in an anthology published by Véhicule Press. Sivan lived abroad for many years and is fascinated by the encounters that take place when distinct communities meet, a theme she enjoys exploring in her writing, and in her life—and in the short story collection she hopes to complete soon.

Photo credits: Sivan Slapak (header image); Leslie Schachter (headshot)

September 12, 2018
Coming to My Senses: The Healing Properties of Fiction—By April Ford

It was the start of my second year in the undergraduate creative writing program at Concordia University, and I was feeling refreshed. Ready to take my craft by the horns. I had spent the summer purging myself of all the problems my first-year fiction instructor had pointed out in my work: my habit of making characters fall in love in springtime and out of love in a post-New Year, Montreal-style winter; naming all secondary male characters “Adam,” and imbuing these Adams with vaguely biblical qualities; etc.

I had built up stamina over the summer, so imagine my delight when my second-year fiction instructor, an accomplished and quirky visiting writer named Peter Such, told the class we would each write 60 pages of a novel under his mentorship. He dictated no rules or structure, and I churned it all out in the first month. I really wanted to impress him. One day after class, Peter asked me to stay behind. Naturally, I was hoping he would say something positive about my work (I’ve sent your 60 pages to every literary agent in North America!). He did, he said I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and then he posed a question whose answer was so shockingly obvious that I felt embarrassed for not having come to it on my own, especially after my summer of intense writing practice:

“April, why do none of your characters ever experience taste or smell?”

The truth is, I haven’t experienced a new flavor or odour since December 12, 1995, the day I ran across an intersection at the same time as a motorist sped through the yellow light. It didn’t end optimally for me, as you can imagine, but after five months in hospital and rehabilitative care, I found my footing and moved on—without the trusted companionship of my gustatory and olfactory senses. And while I had focused, post-accident, on all the real-life ways this loss affected me (I was now susceptible to food that was “off” enough to make me violently ill, for example), I hadn’t begun to tap into the ways my unconsciousness—the writer’s dreamscape—was also being affected.

“The truth is, I haven’t experienced a new flavor or odour since December 12, 1995, the day I ran across an intersection at the same time as a motorist sped through the yellow light.”

When we write fiction, we empower our characters with human qualities. Often, this isn’t a difficult task; by impulse so subtle it’s more like instinct, we continuously assign our own sensory experiences to our characters, whether it’s because we haven’t yet learned enough about a developing character to know what his/her/their/its individual experience is like, or because we’ve been so marked by a particular sensation that we’re compelled to write about it until we get it right. In my case, my reaction to Peter’s question was the beginning of my understanding of how experience—and lack thereof—shapes whom and what we create in fiction. “How can I write about a lover’s scent if I can’t smell? Maybe it’s totally foul! How in hell would I know?”

“By impulse so subtle it’s more like instinct, we continuously assign our own sensory experiences to our characters.”

I was pissed at my instructor. It wasn’t because I’d been covering up my still relatively new deficit; it was because Peter had, very kindly, presented me with a writing challenge that I had internalized as a handicap. So many of the aftereffects from the car accident were and always would be preventing me from doing certain things (like driving a car, due to my loss of peripheral vision in both eyes), and I had imported that resignation into my writing.

When I complained about not being able to describe things I hadn’t experienced (and isn’t this every writer’s Achilles’ heel?), Peter said, “Then describe the things you know.” When I claimed that all I knew was boring, he said, “Then make it interesting. It’s your job, after all. This is what being a writer is about.” Finally, I got over myself. Finally, I heard what Peter was saying: My “deficits” were also assets, constant reminders that just because we cannot experience something in this realm, it doesn’t mean we’re off the hook in terms of finding ways for our readers to experience it in that place of dream we go to when we settle in with a book we love. I wrote my first novel that year. It was gaudy and embarrassing the way our earliest works often are, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve kept writing.

April Ford’s fiction has appeared in Grain, New Madrid, SAND, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. Her story “Project Fumarase” is featured in the 2016 Pushcart Prize anthology. Her debut story collection, The Poor Children, was released worldwide in 2015 by SFWP, and her debut novel, Carousel, is forthcoming in 2019 with Inanna Publications. April has spent time at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as a Robert Johnson Fellow, and at Ucross Foundation as a Writer in Residence. She lives in Montreal and is Associate Publisher of SFK Press in Atlanta, Georgia. www.aprilfordauthor.com

Photo credits: Flickr (top banner); Antonella Fratino (headshot)

April 13, 2018
What Playing Piano Taught Me About Writing-by Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt

The movers cost about as much as the piano. When they pulled up in front of our house on a muggy day last August, I understood why. Cars darted around the delivery truck as two men coaxed the swaddled instrument down a ramp and onto a dolly. They worked swiftly. Soon, the piano was being ushered up the walkway to our home. I stepped out of the way.

“Who plays?” asked the first mover, in a thick eastern European accent. “You or him?” He nodded at my partner, who was standing on our front porch with a mystified look on his face.

“Both of us,” I said. It was both true and untrue. My partner, a musician, could play the piano. You wouldn’t find him fleshing out a riff on one, though, as he often did on guitar. As for me, I’d played as a child and into my late teens. But the only keys I’d graced as of late were the ones on my MacBook.

The movers hoisted the piano up our front steps. I hovered while they deliberated removing our front door. My partner hurried away to procure the necessary tools. Then the men decided they wouldn’t remove the door. When my partner reappeared, the piano was crossing the threshold.

“You play Bach?” the first mover called to me as he disappeared inside the house.

“Ten years ago I did,” I said. Piano still felt like a first love, cast off with the arrival of adulthood. During my time at university, the digital piano I’d optimistically bought and shuffled from one apartment to another had all but gathered dust. Eventually, I had resigned myself to reality and sold it off.

Now, I was keenly aware of the privilege of owning a piano, especially in the city, where space, soundproofing, and noise-tolerant neighbours are limited. My partner and I had just moved into an apartment that felt like a real home—another privilege. Fortuitously, that home also happened to be on the ground floor.

With the piano stationed in our living room, the movers left as quickly as they’d arrived. I stared at the instrument with both awe and unease. It had been my partner’s idea: something for both of us. Privately, I had reservations. Where would I find the time? Could I even still play? Would this piano, like its abandoned digital cousin, become a symbol of the person I wanted to be, instead of the person I actually was?

“Would this piano, like its abandoned digital cousin, become a symbol of the person I wanted to be, instead of the person I actually was?”

I spend a lot of time thinking about the person I want to be. I may call myself a writer, but without a published book, I don’t always feel like one. I may have a string of small-time successes, but those publications are also reminders of the frustrating slowness of the writing process. Patience is a virtue when it takes years to go from an idea to a polished manuscript to a published story.

“I spend a lot of time thinking about the person I want to be. I may call myself a writer, but without a published book, I don’t always feel like one.”

The piano arrived during a transition period. The move meant more financial responsibility, and as a freelancer, I quelled my anxiety by taking on a full-time contract in addition to my regular workload. Suddenly, I was juggling clients and rising at an unspeakable hour, hoping to squeeze in some writing. Most of the time, I was barely managing my inbox. I thought constantly about my stalled manuscript, and envisioned its completion date slipping farther and farther into the future.

Playing music, I soon remembered, was exhilarating. My fingers settled back into the waltzes and études I hadn’t played in years. I had never been a technically oriented player; now, the mistakes I made mattered little, if at all. There was nothing to prove and no one to prove it to. The joy of playing was enough.

As busy as I was, piano felt like a reprieve instead of an obligation. Sometimes, just seeing the piano—the fact that it took up a quarter of our living room made it hard to miss—was enough to make me stop whatever I was doing, sit down, and play. Why, I wondered, couldn’t writing be that easy?

“Sometimes, just seeing the piano… was enough to make me stop whatever I was doing, sit down, and play. Why, I wondered, couldn’t writing be that easy?”

As summer turned into fall and fall into winter, I kept juggling work commitments. Yet, I knew it wouldn’t be like this forever. A few months of industriousness meant I was in a position to be more selective in the months to come.

Meanwhile, I’d learned a new song on the piano. I hadn’t told myself I would learn anything; I’d simply made a habit of sitting down on the bench. My new musical practice served as a reminder that it is the act itself, not the end result, that counts. As the year wound down, I kept thinking about my manuscript but I stopped agonizing over when it might be finished. All I can do is keep writing when I can. That is enough.

Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt is a Montreal-based writer and translator whose work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Matrix, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Room, PRISM International,and elsewhere. Her story “Resurfacing” was recently shortlisted for the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Prize. Carly is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Optional-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, and is currently working on a short story collection titled Playing the Man. Visit her at carlyrosalie.com or follow her @carlyrosalie.

Photo credits: Simon-Pierre Lacasse

February 12, 2018
‘Just Do It’ for Writers—by Carolyne Van Der Meer

The thing about writing fiction is you need to know what kind of writer you are. The kind who needs a plan, or the kind who doesn’t. I was convinced I needed a plan. Lori Weber taught me I didn’t.

Earlier this year, I was chosen as one of the mentees in the QWF’s annual mentorship program. The goal was to work on my young adult fiction novel with Lori, a prolific children’s writer and YA fiction novelist. I’ve been at this novel—my first—for a few years. I’ve worked with other mentors, attended workshops, and been part of writing groups. But I was stuck. And Lori, using wisdom gleaned from writing ten books, unstuck me. It has been euphoric.

Prior to beginning the mentorship in February, I handed more than 100 pages over to Lori, written over the last three years. Chapters, scenes, flashbacks, character sketches—and a plan. A plan that outlined my novel in thirty-three chapters. This novel was planned to the hilt. Every move was carved out. So why couldn’t I write it?

“I’ve been at this novel—my first—for a few years. I’ve worked with other mentors, attended workshops, and been part of writing groups. But I was stuck.”

At our first mentorship session—a two-hour foray into scones, homemade jam, and Earl Grey—Lori asked me to tell her my goals for the four-month mentorship. Of course I wanted to advance my novel. But I wanted to talk about craft. I wanted to pick her brain. Hey, here I had, right in front of me, a very fine YA novelist, a successful one with some ten books to her credit—one, Yellow Mini, even written in verse. I’m a poet first—so Lori became my hero pretty fast. I wanted to understand how she does it. How does she hammer out all those words and weave them into a believable story, one that young people will not be able to put down? I wanted to know her secret.

“This novel was planned to the hilt. Every move was carved out. So why couldn’t I write it?”

It was simple: drop the plan.

What? Yes, I had heard right. Get rid of that bloody plan.

So as much as our mentorship together was about writing, it was also about teaching me something I didn’t at first believe I needed to learn—and something I doubted I was capable of learning. How?

Well, she asked me, why did this novel need to be mapped out so tightly? I had a general idea, didn’t I, of where I wanted to go, so why not run with that? It didn’t seem to me to be enough. But Lori had plenty of examples, the most significant one being that she was hard at work on her eleventh book, one that she was mapping out—as it got written—on the wall in multi-coloured post-it notes. The plan didn’t come beforehand: it was being developed as she wrote.

This was a completely foreign notion to me. I was used to writing poetry, where the idea could be banged out in a few minutes. I knew from minute one what my storyline would be and I could get it out in one sitting. Of course, then I would spend hours reworking and reworking—until I had something that I was convinced was jolting. Something that would move the reader in some way. And then Lori asked me the question that changed everything: why was writing my novel any different?

Of course I had lots of reasons for her: because I didn’t know what the outcome would be; because I didn’t know how to deal with the passing of time; because I need to describe what happens in every second of every minute; because I need a plan to get from A to B.

You just believe, she said. And you write. It was like the Nike slogan. Just Do It.

Over the next few months—over many cups of Earl Grey and too many scones, Lori taught me how to “let go” and believe that I don’t need a prescription. If I had a strong general notion of the plot and of the various climaxes on the plotline, I could simply start writing and gently push myself towards the outcome. Her mantra of “just write it” became my own. Simple but true. Lori kept telling me that if I didn’t write it, there would be nothing to work with, nothing to fix. Just like the poem I could write in a few minutes and rework and rework.

“Her mantra of ‘just write it’ became my own. Simple but true.”

So apart from some very concrete accomplishments, such as a general plot overview, a complete character tree, the necessary historical research—and five completed chapters—I have come away from this mentorship with a new skill: being able to let go and just believe. Lori showed me how to work with intuition, energy, even faith. She claims she doesn’t know what will come out until she writes. So writing is the key. I believe her now. And I got rid of the plan. Really.

If you are a Quebec-based English-language writer and you’d like to apply for mentor, or to be a mentor, visit the call for applications for the 2018 program.

Carolyne Van Der Meer is the author of Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience. Her second book, a collection of poetry called Journeywoman, will be published by Inanna this fall.

Photo credit: Bassam Sabbagh (headshot)

September 21, 2017
The Art of Mentorship: An Interview with Robert Edison Sandiford

Every couple of weeks, Robert Edison Sandiford calls me from Barbados. Robert is one of this year’s QWF fiction mentors, and I am his protégé. We’ve made arrangements to speak at 5 p.m. via Skype so this interview would feel more face-to-face. At 5:10, we still have no audio so he switches from his desktop to his laptop. At 5:25 the recording app on my phone stops working. At 5:37 we decide we’ll have to hobble back and forth between the computers, a phone, and another phone app to somehow make it work. Afterwards, when it’s all sorted, he says: “Well, there’s a lesson about tenacity.”

Robert was born in Montreal to Barbadian parents. He is the author of nine books that range in form from short and long fiction to memoir, graphic novels, and erotica. Over a period of four months, he’s worked with me on my own collection of stories and we’ve talked about many things: process and voice, the German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, and how baking helps to reduce stress. Robert answers my questions below.

—Pamela Hensley

PAMELA HENSLEY

Let’s start with a quote from Fairfield, your most recent collection of short stories. In reference to engaging fiction, you say: “All that matters… is the individual and the moment.” Can you expand on that?

ROBERT EDISON SANDIFORD

In the context of the collection, it had to do with making the most of art. It had to do with knowing when something is ready or when an artist has what it takes. It comes from a quote by Matthew Arnold [“For the creation of a masterwork… two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment”]. How do you know when you’ve got what it takes? All we are is who we are and the talent that we have. My contention is that most people are a little better than they think they are. They can do better than they’ve done.

HENSLEY

Besides being a mentor, you’re an editor and teacher. How does one turn a good manuscript into a great one? Or a good writer into a great writer?

SANDIFORD

There has to be that spark within the work itself, or within the writer. There has to be something inside that person already that lends itself to greatness. And it may depend on how we define greatness. There are a lot of artists, not just writers, people who never enjoyed recognition while they were alive or young enough to enjoy it. So there’s that question again, of the individual and the moment and the individual and talent. There are certain things you can teach people to make them better writers but that sort of greatness, that may also depend on them.

HENSLEY

In Fairfield, a fictional editor writes that the character G. Brandon Sisnett borrowed from other authors, including one from Montreal who wrote Caribbean fiction on the themes of “familial loss and managing the pain of living.” Which are themes that recur in your work. Would you like to talk about theme?

SANDIFORD

I’m curious about theme. Both of us are writing from a particular place. Germany finds its way into your stories, as well as Canada. For me, it’s Barbados and Canada. Theme is distinct from subject matter but they inform each other. I write out of where I am but also where I come from. I do believe that all writing is regional, in a sense. People talk about things being universal but I think it goes to honesty. If you write in a way that is honest, the regional will get you to the universal. Someone will pick up the story halfway around the world and say, “I relate.”

“There are certain things you can teach people to make them better writers but that sort of greatness, that may also depend on them.”

HENSLEY

Is place a detail?

SANDIFORD

Place is a necessary detail: your characters have got to be somewhere. But it’s more than that. It’s a space in which you invite the reader to share an experience. It’s about learning, actually. If I write about a particular place, I want you to feel that place. I want you to experience it as if you were actually there. Unless having a non-descript setting is important to telling the story, then why have this non-descript thing? I get the answer, “But I want it to be universal.” I just say, “Stop. What you may be doing is taking out the necessary edges that people need to relate to the story even more.”

“I do believe that all writing is regional, in a sense. People talk about things being universal but I think it goes to honesty. If you write in a way that is honest, the regional will get you to the universal.”

HENSLEY

What’s the difference between style and voice?

SANDIFORD

Style and voice tend to be synonymous. But to make a differentiation, when writers are starting out I like to talk about approach. I used to talk about style but I think writers get confused. They say, “But the way I put it down is a style. I like to use all these ellipses when I write, that’s my style.” And I say, “No, that’s more of an approach and it may even be a bad approach.” Style is something that you develop over time. Voice is all those things combined. It’s reading a work and recognizing who it is. Ultimately, it’s telling a story in a particular way. It can’t be told by anybody else.

HENSLEY

You published your first story collection more than 20 years ago. Does it get any easier?

SANDIFORD

Hell, no! Publishing is more difficult now than it was before. Coming up with a story, I don’t know that that gets any easier. What gets easier, maybe, is knowing what works and what doesn’t. But I wake up every morning doing what I do and I have no regrets. Ever. That’s a hell of a thing to be able to say.

On June 4, the 2017 QWF mentors and mentees will present new writing at the annual public reading in Montreal. Click here for more information.

Robert Edison Sandiford is the author of nine books, most recently Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett. He is the founder, with the poet Linda M. Deane, of the cultural forum ArtsEtc Inc. A recipient of Barbados’ Governor General’s Award for his fiction and the Harold Hoyte Award for newspaper editing, he has also worked as a teacher and video producer.

Pamela Hensley is new to Montreal, having relocated once again after returning from Germany to Ontario. She was selected to participate in the 2017 QWF Mentorship program and is currently attending her first QWF workshop. You can read her stories in Canadian journals, including The Dalhousie Review and EVENT magazine, and are invited to hear her read with other QWF mentees at The Comedy Nest, Montreal Forum on Sunday, June 4 at 2 pm.

Photo credits: Pamela Hensley (top banner); Aeryn Sandiford (Sandiford headshot); Gordon Hensley (Hensley headshot)

May 25, 2017
Tuesday, or Was It Wednesday?—by Joshua Levy

One Tuesday—or was it Wednesday? —I visited my parents.

Written anything lately? asked my dad, during supper.

I had. I fetched my laptop from my car and read a short story about my brother’s recent engagement to them while we ate.

When I was done, my dad said it was very witty, great use of metaphor, but why hadn’t I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God?

My dad’s a lawyer.

But, I said, it really happened. You were there!

I never said those things, said my mom. And I made butternut squash lasagna that day, not hummus or feta salad.

I felt accused. You uttered extremely similar things, I said. I can’t remember exact dialogue. But you’re right about the butternut squash lasagna. I’ll change that.

They looked at me sadly, my parents did.

I don’t think Menachem was wearing a fanny pack that day, added my dad.

The point, I said, is that the major facts are all true, if not the minor ones.

My dad stood up and went to the freezer, bent down behind the kitchen island, and resurfaced holding a tub of Neapolitan ice cream.

None for me, Ricky, said my mom.

Josh? asked my dad.

Sure, I said.

“My dad said it was very witty, great use of metaphor, but why hadn’t I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God?”

He opened a cabinet next to the sink and grabbed two ceramic bowls. Each had a different colourful made-up bird painted on it. Or were they real bird species? My parents had bought them a decade earlier in Nova Scotia, while visiting my sister at university. Mind you, it could have been New Brunswick where they bought the bowls….

I wasn’t sure. The facts felt like slippery fish in my hands.

If you’re going to write non-fiction, offered my dad, while running a spoon under hot water, it should be 100 percent true.

I agree, said my mom. Don’t make anything up.

But, I said, I’m not. Memories change colours and shapes under different conditions.

Two scoops or three? asked my dad.

Different what? asked my mom.

Two, I said.

Different what? repeated my mom.

Conditions. Like the passage of time or evolving perspectives. That stuff.

My mom said, ah, I don’t buy it.

A fact’s a fact, Josh, said my dad, handing me an ice cream bowl.

One, two. I count two scoops in your bowl, declared my mom.

My dad nodded. That’s a fact, he said.

I sighed. I didn’t disagree with my parents. Facts are vital and I wanted them all.

But my story had been about shining a light on unverifiable, deeper truths: family relations, love, loneliness. Whether Menachem wore his fanny pack or not on that particular day was, in my opinion, such a minor fact that researching it could stifle the creative process.

“Memories change colours and shapes under different conditions.”

Another Tuesday—or was it Wednesday?—I visited my parents.

Written anything lately? asked my dad, during supper.

I had. I fetched my laptop from my car and read a factually bullet-proof story about Visiting Day during my first summer at sleepaway camp to them while we ate:

On Visiting Day, my parents came with my younger brother, Daniel. They brought me a bag of Archie and Spider-Man comics and some candy. My sister, Samantha, was probably also there, since she was less than a year old at the time.

The camp director made a speech to all parents and campers. The speech was almost certainly in English, since that was the only language he spoke. I think we then went to the waterfront and paddled in a canoe, but that could be a memory from the following summer.

I don’t remember if it was a sunny or rainy day, but I do remember the emptiness I felt when Visiting Day ended.

That’s a terrible story, said my dad.

Embellish a little, said my mom.

Joshua Levy splits his time between Montreal, Canada, and Lisbon, Portugal. He is grateful to the QWF for their support over the years and has participated in eight QWF writing workshops to improve his craft. Joshua is a winner of the 2010 QWF Quebec Writing Competition and was longlisted for the 2007 competition. He has had poetry published in Carte Blanche, told stories live at Blue Metropolis for This Really Happened, and written for QWF Writes. Joshua has been published by the Oxford University Press, Véhicule Press, Maisonneuve, Vallum, The Feathertale Review, The Rumpus, and The Malahat Review. He is a regular storyteller on CBC Radio and recently received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write a memoir.

Photo credit: Seth Sawyers (top banner); Steve Gerrard (headshot)

April 13, 2017
Empathy by the Book: How Fiction Affects Behavior by Susan Pinker

When I want to escape I pick up a good novel. But does this habit provide more than a quick getaway?

We’ve long known about the collateral benefits of habitual reading—a richer vocabulary, for example. But that’s only part of the picture. Mounting evidence over the past decade suggests that the mental calisthenics required to live inside a fictional character’s skin foster empathy for the people you meet day-to-day.

In 2006, a study led by University of Toronto psychologists Keith Oatley and Raymond Mar connected fiction-reading with increased sensitivity to others. To measure how much text the readers had seen in their lifetimes, they took an author-recognition test—a typical measure for this type of study. “The more fiction people read, the better they empathized,” was how Dr. Oatley summarized the findings. The effect didn’t hold for nonfiction.

Still, no one knew whether reading fiction fostered empathy or empathy fostered an interest in fiction. Other factors could have been at play too, like personality.

So, in 2009, part of the Oatley-Mar team involved in the 2006 study reproduced it with a sample of 252 adults—this time controlling for age, gender, IQ, English fluency, stress, loneliness and personality type. The researchers also assessed participants’ “tendency to be transported by a narrative”—the sense that you’re experiencing a story from within, not watching it as an outsider.

Finally, participants took an objective test of empathy, called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. The aim of all of this was to see how long-term exposure to fiction influenced their ability to intuit the emotions and intentions of people in the real world.

The results? Once competing variables were statistically stripped away, fiction reading predicted higher levels of empathy. Such readers also lived large in the flesh-and-blood social sphere, with richer networks of people to provide entertainment and support than people who read less fiction. This finding put to rest the stereotype of bookworms as social misfits who use fictional characters as avatars for real friends and romantic partners.

Later studies confirmed that reading fiction does cause a spike in the ability to detect and understand other people’s emotions—at least in the short term. In a series of experiments published in 2013 in Science, social psychologist Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd of the New School for Social Research tried to figure out whether the type of fiction mattered.

“This finding put to rest the stereotype of bookworms as social misfits who use fictional characters as avatars for real friends and romantic partners.”

The researchers handed subjects—in groups ranging in size from 69 to 356—different types of genre fiction, literary fiction or nonfiction, or nothing to read at all. They then assessed participants on several measures of empathy. Nonfiction—along with horror, sci-fi or romance novels—had little effect on the capacity to detect others’ feelings and thoughts. Only literary fiction, which requires readers to work at guessing characters’ motivations from subtle cues, fostered empathy.

In these studies, the reading of nonfiction not only failed to spur empathy but also predicted loneliness and social isolation, especially among men. Of course, nonfiction reading has its virtues. Other research suggests that various kinds of nonfiction can prompt empathetic feelings—as long as the narrative is moving and transformative.

In recent studies, neuroscientist Paul Zak at Claremont Graduate University and colleagues showed participants heartfelt stories, such as a video narrated by a father of a toddler with brain cancer. The video induced a spike in observers’ levels of oxytocin—a hormone that promotes trust, nurturing and empathy—and larger donations to charity. Watching a straightforward travelogue-type video of the same father and son visiting the zoo didn’t have that effect.

Apparently, what matters is not whether a story is true. Instead, as Dr. Oatley says, “If you’re enclosed in the bubble of your own life, can you imagine the lives of others?”

Susan Pinker is a Montreal-based psychologist, writer and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Her most recent book is The Village Effect. www.susanpinker.com

This piece was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.

Photo Credits: Zak Greant (top); Susie Lowe (headshot)

January 19, 2017
Don’t Blink by Marianne Ackerman

Choosing a book title and cover is a lot like naming a baby. Quite a few people tend to weigh in, so the process can be a serious source of anxiety. Yet somehow, once you settle, the choice seems obvious.

In the case of my new short story collection, Mankind and Other Stories of Women, the title was spontaneous. The title story, “Mankind,” first saw the light of day last Christmas as a monologue directed by Harry Standjofski, performed by the wonderful Leni Parker at Centaur Theatre’s annual Urban Tales event. For Leni’s character, a lonely woman enduring Christmas Eve with her box of wine and chocolate, the word mankind is a euphemism for the scent of a man. It’s very much a woman’s story. So are the other nine, hence the title. I made a conscious effort to focus on women this time after my last collection, Holy Fools + 2 Stories (Guernica 2014), was full of male characters—puzzling, since I thought I’d won the struggle over the animus-domination of my imagination ages ago.

The cover was not obvious. On a brief trip to Calgary in April, I discovered an amazing sculptor at the Trépanier Baer Gallery. Walking through the door, I was hit by the super elongated shape of a very thin, nearly naked corpse behind glass: Evan Penny’s Homage to Holbein, an eerie rendering in silicone and real hair of a Christ-like figure, almost fourteen feet long and chillingly life-like. My first thought was, this work belongs at the entrance to a church. It’s a religious experience.

Days later, the images were still strong. Perusing the gallery website, I settled on Marsyas (Model), a twenty-four-inch high sculpture of a male torso, inspired by a Greek statue, which was part of the exhibition. Covers are traditionally the publisher’s domain, with input from the author. But I’ve known my publisher Mike Mirolla for a long time. I know he’s a dark soul. He loved the image immediately. Thus began the dance by which a raw visual idea and text become one.

I could not explain why that image worked with my stories, which tend to be airy, urban, sometimes playful, and, some people say, funny. Maybe the figure’s vulnerability, resistance or air of fatalism speak to the tragic thread found in all comedy. As I revised the manuscript for publication, I found myself working him into the first story, “Mina,” which is about a friendship of rivalry and complicity between two women, their creative struggle, and one crazy night.

“As I revised the manuscript for publication, I found myself working him into the first story…”

After the normal back and forth, designer David Moratto’s concept was finalized. I slapped the cover up on Facebook, eagerly announcing my forthcoming fall book. It was mid-winter. The response was pretty well total negativity. Some of my dearest friends, smart people, said it was awful, scary, repellent. Nobody would touch this book!

I was not prepared. I threw myself on the bed, lamenting once again my weakness for getting over-involved in practically everything. Now I’d have to face Mike and David with bad news, not to mention the gallerist, Yves Trépanier, and the artist, whose work I love.

Mike did not share my panic attack, but held back. Yves did not. “Don’t listen to them! It’s a strong cover,” he barked via email. “You were right the first time. Don’t blink.”

“The response was pretty well total negativity. Some of my dearest friends, smart people, said it was awful, scary, repellent. Nobody would touch this book!”

Next to my control freakishness, impulsiveness is probably my greatest flaw. Here was somebody I respected telling me to trust my impulse. I looked at the cover again. At the other options I was trying to like. I asked Yves what his wife thought. He assured me she loved it. So I decided to take his advice, remain faithful to my first impulse. Well, except for a last-minute tussle over (ahem) how much “cleavage” should appear below my name. I did not want readers to be distracted by a dangling sack of flesh.

Now that a stack of books is sitting on the dining room table, I can’t imagine a better cover than Evan Penny’s classy, classical all-too-human torso. I have no idea what readers will think, how it will affect their desire to pick up this book. But the baby isn’t mine any more. It is thoroughly herself.

Mankind and Other Stories of Women will be launched along with three other local titles from Guernica Editions at Montreal’s Atwater Library (1200 Atwater Ave.) on Thursday, September 29, 6 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the QWF. Click here for more information on the launch.

Marianne Ackerman writes plays and novels. marianneackerman.com

Photo credits: Photo of Evan Penny’s Marsyas Model (2016) courtesy of Evan Penny, and Kevin Baer – TrépanierBaer Gallery; Lesley McCubbin (headshot)

September 20, 2016
Literary Influences: E. L. Doctorow’s Lives of the Poets by John Goldbach

The first time I read E. L. Doctorow’s wonderful Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories (1984) was in early 2001, after picking up a used hardcover copy at City Lights Bookshop in London, Ontario, at 356 Richmond St. Not City Lights Bookstore, the famed bookstore in San Francisco, California, at 261 Columbus Ave—City Lights Bookshop (the one in London ON) is one of my favourite used bookstores ever, a small but dense and rich oasis of books and comics and records, etc.

A few years later, after reading Slavoj Žižek’s Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (2004), I reread Lives of the Poets. Much to my surprise, Žižek references Doctorow’s collection in his second book about 9/11 and its aftermath (namely, the illogic of the Bush administration’s reasons for invading Iraq). I was surprised to learn Žižek uses Doctorow’s collection as a sort of model. Žižek writes,

The hidden literary model for this book is what I consider E. L. Doctorow’s masterpiece, the supreme exercise in literary post-modernism, far superior to his bestselling Ragtime, or Billy Bathgate: his Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella—six totally heterogeneous short stories (a son is set to the task of concealing his father’s death; a drowned child is callously handled by rescuers; a lonely schoolteacher is shot by a hunter; a boy witnesses his mother’s act of infidelity; a car explosion kills a foreign schoolgirl) accompanied by a novella which conveys the confused impressions of the day-to-day life of a writer in contemporary New York who, as we soon guess, is the author of the six stories. The charm of the book is that we can reconstruct the process of the artistic working-through of the raw material of this day-to-day life.

As soon as I’d finished Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, I reread Lives of the Poets, my engagement with the book deepening.

I’ve read the Doctorow collection twice since then. About a decade later, in 2015, I used it as an oblique model for organizing a book of my own fiction, It Is an Honest Ghost, which consists of six stories and a novella (Hic et Ubique). There was something about how Doctorow’s stories stood alone—were “totally heterogeneous,” in Žižek’s words—but nevertheless informed one another, that I found haunting.

My new collection was originally made up of eight stories and a novella but for myriad reasons I cut two stories, not the least of those reasons being for the sake of uniformity, a loose strange symmetry—a uniformity and symmetry impressed upon my mind by Doctorow.

And then I read Lives of the Poets for a fourth time in July 2016, while working on this short appreciation. Lives of the Poets remains politically perspicacious, deeply insightful, and contemporary.

Here’s Doctorow on US immigration, and mass migrations in general. The writer, the narrator of the novella, emerges from the NYC subway, and observes the new waves of immigrants to the city. He writes,

Dear God, let them migrate, let my country be the last best hope. But let us make some distinctions here: The Irish, the Italians, the Jews of Eastern Europe, came here because they wanted a new life. They worked for the money to bring over their families. They said good riddance to the old country and were glad to be gone. They did not come here because of something we had done to them. The new immigrants are here because we have made their lands unlivable. They have come here to save themselves from us.

Lives of the Poets continues to shed light on the present for me. Out of Doctorow’s impressive and celebrated oeuvre, it’s often overlooked. But it remains an insightful and inspiring collection, chock-a-block with strange echoes and resonances.

John Goldbach is the author of The Devil and the Detective (Coach Books, 2013), a novel, which was an Amazon Best Book of 2013; Selected Blackouts (Insomniac Press, 2009), a story collection; and, most recently, It Is an Honest Ghost (Coach House Books, 2016), a collection of six short stories and a novella (Hic et Ubique).

Works Cited: Žižek, Slavoj. Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle. New York: Verso, 2004, p. 7.

Photo: Kate Hutchinson (headshot)

August 27, 2016