QWF Writes

Tag: writing

  • All Languages / Languages All—By Rachel McCrum

    All Languages / Languages All—By Rachel McCrum

    “Les langues sont toutes les mêmes lorsqu’elles tournent ensemble.”

    —Danny Plourde

    “All languages are the same when they’re in tune.”

    —translated by Antonio D’Alfonso

    “Languages all come together when they’re dancing.”

    —same line, translated by Martha Tremblay-Vilao

    LesNuitsAmerindiennes
    Les nuits amérindiennes, Port-au-Prince Haiti, May 2015. Performers include: Chloé Sainte-Marie, Moe Clark, Marie-Andrée Gill, Rita Mestokosho, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Naomi Fontaine.

    What’s the point of going to see a poetry show if you can’t understand the text? And yet—there it is. That galvanizing, pure communication of the concerns, the beauty, the specificity of another language. The most joyful expression of it that I’ve seen so far was at an unforgettable night with the inzync Poetry sessions in Stellenbosch, South Africa. At least five of South Africa’s eleven official languages were represented onstage, with whispered translations offered by audience members to their neighbours, and whoops of recognition along the way.

    I wanted more.

    Port-au-Prince, May 2015

    I’m nearly the sole Anglophone, and definitely the only Northern Irish, at Les nuits amérindiennes, a festival of First Nations poets and artists in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, curated by the inimitable Rodney Saint-Éloi of Montreal-based publishing house Mémoire d’encrier. The Indigenous poets from Quebec include Joséphine Bacon, Guy Siou Durand, Tomson Highway, Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau, Louis-Karl Picard, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Moe Clark, Marie-Andrée Gill, and Naomi Fontaine. I’ve been sent by the Edinburgh International Book Festival to meet with Joséphine, Natasha, and Naomi for a collaborative project. This is my introduction to Canadian, to québécois, to Indigenous literature. I have no idea what’s going on, and I can barely understand anyone (my Belfast schoolgirl French being wholly inadequate in the circumstances). But at the shows, I’m electrified by the performance and the politics, the unself-consciousness, the self-awareness, the clear-eyed passion, the trickster craftiness—and well-honed craft—of the various artists.

    Nobody really understands why I’m there either, although it’s not that important—this isn’t about me. But I’m not that good at sitting on the sidelines and I’m desperate to communicate, somehow. At the second late-night session at Café Yanvalou, I sidle up to Rodney and ask, haltingly, if I can take a turn at the microphone. The words will be in English, but it’s the only thing I can think of to do. I sweat through a couple of poems, with halting introductions in French. I talk about my mother, and the sea. It works. I cannot speak, but I can extend words. The connection is made. These will become lifelong friends (and in one case, the love of my life, and the beginning of my journey to Montreal).

    Edinburgh, December 2016

    I am finishing up six years in Edinburgh, Scotland, which has mostly been consumed and absorbed with poetry, performance, promoting events, teaching workshops. It’s been a fantastic life. I have been incredibly lucky, starting from the gritty basics of open mic nights and running shows, and ending up being able to make a living, a good living, from all this. I love my community, I love my work, I love, more than anything, what happens when people get on a stage with their words, and speak them to an audience. And I’m leaving it.

    Even I’m not entirely sure why, except that there is love on the other side of the Atlantic. And there is a chance, a real chance to follow this thread of poetry and of performance, and try to understand how, if one cannot follow the sense of the words in an art form that bases its craft on the finer points of language, one can still be so affected by multilingual performances. In Quebec, my native language—which I have spent the last few years learning how to wield as a poet—becomes one among many.

    Montreal, November 2018

    I’m at Langues liées // Linked Tongues in La Sala Rossa, Boulevard Saint Laurent, Montreal. It’s the opening event of the Mile End Poets’ Festival, and there are ten poets on stage. There are ten languages on the stage. Aside from French and English, there is Arabic, Creole, Korean, Innu-aimun, Italian, Occitan, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Wolof. These are mother tongues, and father tongues; languages of politics, of home, of love.

    Languages talk of their own concerns, at once specific and universal. Martha Tremblay-Vilão sings saudade, the Portuguese longing for a past or a home that no longer exists. Hossein Sharang talks of Iran, of democracy, of the impossibility of a country of eighty-two million terrorists. David Bouchet asks—in Wolof, with the aid of cue cards (and his fellow poets): “Where are you, who are you, how are you?” Marcela Huerta performs the stiltedness, then fluidity, of learning English as the daughter of Chilean refugees.

    The audience doesn’t understand everything that is being said, but there are ripples of comprehension when a new language is presented. There is a table of Arabic speakers, another of Portuguese. Maëlle Dupon’s mother is in the audience to hear her perform in Occitan; another supporter, a Haitian friend of Maëlle’s, is blown away when his ears catch the Creole of Chloé Savoie-Bernard.

    In La Sala Rossa, the last impressions are of joy. Of something ventured and something gained. Of respect. Everyone on that stage can do something that no one else can. They’ve worked for this show, they’ve risked, they’ve listened to one another, translated, called out and responded. And we’re here, and we will listen.

    RachelMcCrum_headshot

    Rachel McCrum is a poet, performer, and promoter—and also the Membership & Communications Co-ordinator of the Quebec Writers’ Federation.* She is originally from Northern Ireland, and has performed and taught poetry in Greece, South Africa, Haiti, Canada, and around the UK. She lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 2010 to 2016, where she was the inaugural BBC Scotland Poet-in-Residence, a recipient of an RLS Fellowship, and the co-host of cult spoken word cabaret Rally & Broad. Her first book, The First Blast To Awaken Women Degenerate, was published in 2017. She has lived in Montreal since January 2017, where she co-directs (with Ian Ferrier) the Mile End Poets’ Festival and curates the bilingual poetry performance series, Les Cabarets Bâtards.

    *As an employee of the QWF, Rachel has waived the fee for this article.

    Photo credits: Michael Kovacs (header image, showing Maëlle Dupon, Uasheshkun Bacon, and Martha Tremblay-Vilão reading in Occitan, Innu-aimun, and Portuguese at Langues liées // Linked Tongues); Rachel McCrum (top image); Ryan McGoverne (headshot)

  • Us Impostors—By Caroline Vu

    Us Impostors—By Caroline Vu

    Header image: Letters sent to Caroline Vu by her Vietnamese friends in the 1970s.

    By some incredible stroke of good luck, I was invited last spring to Étonnants Voyageurs, France’s prestigious international literary festival. On top of a speaker fee, I would be reimbursed for my hotel, food and transportation.  To my surprise, I was to appear on the same panel as the famous Dany Laferrière. I wondered if some FrenchLit assistant organizer hadn’t mistaken me for Kim Thuy.

    “Dany Laferrière of l’Académie française fame! What will I say next to him? I’ll look like a dummy. Maybe I shouldn’t go…” I told my friend Lisa.

    “Nahhh, go,” Lisa said.

    “But… I’ll sound so stupid in my half-baked French! I hate public speaking,” I protested.

    “Yeah, you’ll appear simplistic next to the pros. So what? Nobody will remember your mumbling the next day. But Facebook photos of you with Dany? That’s gold. They’ll live forever on the internet. Smoke and mirrors, that’s what counts…”

    “You’re clever,” I said.

    “I didn’t do an MBA for nothing,” Lisa replied.

    I took my friend’s advice, said ‘yes’ to the invitation and went home to practice my French. Immediately I felt like a professional impostor.

    dany laferriere - paris salon du livre
    Alecia McKenzie, Dany Laferrière, and Caroline Vu at the 2017 Livre Paris, a year before the festival in Saint-Malo.

    Étonnants Voyageurs, held each spring in the beautiful seaside town of Saint-Malo, is a festival to behold. Book lovers come from all over France and French-speaking countries to hear their favourite authors. In town, I had a large room overlooking the Atlantic. I was invited to champagne lunches. I met interesting writers from Canada and France. The sun shone throughout our stay. Yet I was restless—couldn’t sleep at night, was nervous during the day. I dreaded public speaking so much, I even thought about skipping the panels. “Sore throat, lost my voice… laryngitis. Can’t come, sorry…” I could use that as an excuse. Being a doctor, I could even give myself a medical note.

    Of course I didn’t give myself a fake medical note. I did show up for the panels. Dany was accommodating both on stage and behind the scenes. To put me at ease, he made a friendly joke about shy authors. It was one of those rare moments when I actually laughed on stage.

    I don’t remember much of what was asked of me on those panels or how I answered.  Only one question stayed with me. It was a question I have been asked in the past: How did I start writing fiction?

    To this question, some of my co-panellists mentioned being influenced by their father’s extensive library. Or a teacher’s encouragement. Numerous classical authors were named as sources of inspiration. Then the host turned to me: “How did you start writing? Which authors inspired you, Caroline?” Many authors had, but in my nervous state I couldn’t name anyone. I gulped, then decided to stick to the same narrative I’ve told friends.

    I was eleven when I left my native country of Vietnam. It was during the height of the war. Overnight we went from chaotic, war-torn Saigon to a quiet Connecticut town. I should’ve been grateful for the change, but somehow I wasn’t. Not speaking a word of English, knowing nothing of American culture, I was lost. I was at an age when the sense of belonging seemed more important than the dangers of war. And in that small Connecticut school, I simply didn’t belong. So I hung on to the memory of old friendships. Daily I longed for the bond I once had with childhood friends still living in a ravaged Vietnam. My weekly letters to them eventually became exercises in obfuscation. Not wanting to burden them with my laments of loneliness, I made up stories of trading barrettes with popular girls, of throwing Frisbees to blond boys, of excelling in team sports. In reality, I’d spent my free time watching others play. In reality, I’d only heard “Boo!” in gym class since I could never grasp the strange rules of baseball.

    Those letters to old friends were pure fantasy, I said. An eleven-year-old impostor, that was me. That was how I started writing fiction, I told the host. Some members of the audience nodded in sympathy while others smiled. I guess I didn’t do too badly.

    That narrative about writing make-believe letters home is mostly true. I know I exaggerated some parts, but now I’ve forgotten which ones. With time I’ve come to believe wholly in my tale. A little varnish on the truth can’t hurt a good story—I’ve succeeded in convincing myself.

    “Once an impostor, always an impostor,” I told Lisa with shame upon my return home from Saint-Malo.

    “But aren’t all novelists impostors? Always concocting fake stories to lure readers? Always trying to milk some tears or laughter? Don’t worry!” Lisa exclaims.

    “Hmmm…”

    “Great Facebook photos with Dany, by the way! I’ve already shared them on Twitter…”

    Ahhh, MBA-ers, what would we impostors do without them?

    CarolineVu-headshot

    Caroline Vu was born in Vietnam and left her native country at the age of eleven. She moved to Canada after spending two years in the US. Caroline’s first novel, Palawan Story (Deux Voiliers Publishing) won the Canadian Author Association’s Fred Kerner prize in 2016. That novel was also a finalist for the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Concordia University First Book Prize. Palawan Story was translated into French (Éditions de la Pleine Lune) in 2017 and was a finalist for the 2018 Blue Metropolis Diversity Prize. Her second novel, That Summer in Provincetown (Guernica Editions) has also been translated into French (Éditions de la Pleine Lune). Caroline currently works as a family physician in a community health clinic in Montreal.

    Photo credits: Caroline Vu (header image); Courtesy of Éditions de la Pleine Lune (at Paris Livre); Marc-Antoine Zouéki (headshot)

  • Writing about Not Writing—By Sivan Slapak

    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—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.

    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 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.

    profile 2017 leslie schachter

    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)

  • What If Your Computer Listened to You?—By Mariam S. Pal

    What If Your Computer Listened to You?—By Mariam S. Pal

    “New line numeral one period space cap that the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog bold lazy dog exclamation mark.” My telephone rings. “Go to sleep,” I say to my computer, and the cute little green mic on its screen turns blue and shuts off. I answer my phone: “Hello?”

    It’s a typical day in my sunny second-floor home office. Headset on, I look like a faraway call-centre worker whose thankless task is to explain why your suitcase is in Montevideo. But I’m not calming cranky customers; I’m writing by dictation. I turned off my mic before answering the phone because otherwise, my conversation would have ended up as text on my screen.

    When I write, I don’t scrawl with a pen or pencil, hunt and peck on a keyboard, or even bang away on a typewriter. I slide on a headset, say “Wake up,” and start yakking at my computer. My voice recognition software converts speech to email messages, text in Word, and more. Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, my writing silently scrolls onto the screen every few seconds. I’ve been working like this for about fifteen years; chronic repetitive movement injuries forced me to look into alternatives to typing.

    I use Dragon Naturally Speaking, one of several voice recognition programs available to writers. It costs about the same as a couple of trips to the physiotherapist. If prescribed by a physician, voice recognition software is a tax-deductible medical expense. Google Docs, Windows 10, and Apple have similar features for free. All are based on the same technology.

    Leaning back in my swivel chair, feet up on my desk, I feel like Don Draper in Mad Men, dictating a letter. Unlike Don Draper, I don’t have a secretary, so I need to tell my computer where to add commas and what to capitalize. The first sentence of this essay, in “dictate-speak,” is what I would need to say in order to have the following text appear on my screen:

    1. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog!

    Verbal commands allow me to switch the mic off or on, add punctuation, capitalize or underline. Don’t like the last sentence? Say, “Scratch that!” It’s erased. Want to change a word? Say, “Correct that!” then select one of several numbered options or type in your change.

    When trained for the user’s voice, my dictation software is 95 percent accurate. It’s important to use a good quality headset and to enunciate clearly. This makes it easier for the program to understand you.

    All this technology is great but it can drive you nuts. Despite repeatedly adding “Amritsar,” a city in India, to the dictation vocabulary, I still find “Emirates are” merrily spelled out on my screen. Argh! In my experience, homonyms are handled better: “four” and “fore” are rarely confused.

    Dictating changed my writing process. Once I got used to talking to my computer, I realized that I wrote for longer stretches of time. I was physically comfortable and relaxed. Writing was definitely easier and faster. Liberating my hands freed my mind to think more creatively. Like most of us, I speak faster than I type or write by hand. The words poured out of my mouth onto the screen. It was thrilling. I could finally get the ideas, descriptions, and dialogues swirling in my head onto the page and Dragon kept up with me. Once my words were on the screen I rewrote and refined them.

    At first, some of my dictated text sounded like emails or text messages. I used too many contractions and my sentences were either too long or too short. Colons, semicolons, and other punctuation from written English were noticeably absent. Eventually, I got better at verbalizing in a written style. I’ve developed a habit of working from an outline composed of key words or points. This keeps my dictation focused.

    If typing is painful, then it might be time to look into voice recognition. I caution that dictation is not the solution for everybody. If you write mainly in cafés or libraries, you probably don’t want the world to hear your masterpiece. Also, your microphone will pick up other voices, which will end up as gibberish on the page. Bilingual writers should know that voice recognition programs can only distinguish one language at a time. If you’re writing about going to a “5 à 7” or a dépanneur, you’ll have to enter these words manually.

    I love writing by dictation but sometimes low-tech is best. Simple corrections to dictated text are easiest typed in manually. And when I send a personal note or write the occasional cheque, I go no-tech and enjoy the tactile pleasure of writing: with a fountain pen, filled with ink from a glass bottle.

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    Mariam S. Pal’s essays have been published in the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, The Times of India and The Hindu. She is completing a memoir about being Pakistani-Canadian. A recently published excerpt is available at http://south85journal.com/issues/spring-summer-2018/non-fiction/behind-the-walls. Mariam has an M.A. in Economics and B.C.L./LL.B. degrees in law, both from McGill University. She is semi-retired. Mariam and her headset live in NDG.

    Photo credits: Mariam S. Pal (header banner); Eli Krantzberg (headshot)

  • Amazing Grace: A Literary Friendship—By S. Nadja Zajdman

    Amazing Grace: A Literary Friendship—By S. Nadja Zajdman

    I was sitting by the gas-lit fireplace in my local library when a book on the table caught my eye. It was the collected correspondence of the novelist Marjorie Rawlings and her editor, Maxwell Perkins. As I read their letters I could hear their long-stilled voices speaking to each other, and to me, across the expanse of decades. I tried to check out the book, but was told it was a reject from a book sale, and if I wanted it I would have to buy it. So I did.

    At home, I looked up Maxwell Perkins on the Internet. A link led me to Perkins’ granddaughter, the novelist Ruth King Porter, who lived in rural Vermont. Ruth was giving away her novels, asking nothing in return but that readers post reviews on her website. I sent for Ruth’s books, and a correspondence began. Soon, we wanted to meet in person. I scheduled a visit to Ruth in spring, then her mother’s dying began. I rescheduled to autumn, then my mother’s dying began.

    Instantly I cancelled travel plans and let go of my already-purchased bus ticket, but a friend with a car offered to take me on a shorter day trip to Vermont. Encouraged by my mother, I accepted.

    “We are two middle-aged women, both wearing glasses.” I wrote to Ruth. “My friend is a blonde with dark roots. I still think of myself as brunette, but there is more salt than pepper in my hair, now.” Ruth wrote that she would be waiting for me under the clock tower of Montpelier’s City Hall. I knew what Ruth looked like from the photographs on her website.

    PerkinsRawlingsBookCoverWe rode into Montpelier on a gloriously warm day at high noon. I saw Ruth sitting on a bench under the clock tower, scribbling in a notebook. Main Street was packed with tourists, and we couldn’t stop the car in front of City Hall. We found a parking space down the street. My friend waited in the car, while I ran down the block. “Ruth?” The woman on the bench looked up, and then leapt up.

    Ruth was a pre-hippie Back-to-the-Lander, in her early seventies when I first met her. At our first encounter, she wore a white work shirt, faded blue jeans, and a black money belt slung over her shoulder. She walked like someone who rode horses.

    “Where’s your friend?” Ruth called through the crowd of tourists blocking the sidewalk.

    “She’s waiting in the car!” I called back. I led Ruth to the car and the friend in it. Ruth led us both on a tour of the golden-domed state capital building. “I hope we don’t run into my son.” Ruth twinkled. “He’d be embarrassed by the way I’m dressed. My son Louis works as an aide to the governor.” When the tour was over Ruth led the way in her battered old car out of Montpelier and higher into the Green Mountains, where another world awaited.

    Ruth’s husband Bill and a second son, Robbie, rode their tractors out of the woods to greet us on the porch of a rambling farmhouse. Nearby, three large dogs stiffened in alert: Ellie and Flora danced in attendance to the top dog, Chief. Ruth’s daughter Molly, an artist who lived, Thoreau-like, in a cabin she built with her hands, bounded up a hill to join us. The open and friendly faces of Ruth’s family smiled at me kindly. I’m sure they were aware of my situation, though no one referred to it. Taut, lean, Alabama-born Bill wiped the grime off his hands and stepped forward to shake mine. I felt as though I’d stepped into an illustration by Norman Rockwell.

    As an early darkness fell my companion and I crossed back over the border, returning to Montreal and my mother’s apartment. “Hello sweetheart.” My dying mother smiled tenderly. “How did it go with the lady in Vermont?”

    What could I say? I felt guilty at having left her, even for a few hours. I didn’t feel like relaying the details of an excursion to Vermont.

    Six months later I returned to Montpelier by bus, alone. Once more, Ruth met me under the clock tower. For a few days I curled under Ruth’s wing, sunning on her roof, sleeping in Max Perkins’ bed, waking to birdsong and skimming the staggering array of autographed out-of-print books dedicated by grateful authors to their engaged and caring editor. “Grieving is hard work,” Ruth would say in greeting when, after a nap, I descended a steep staircase into her dark country kitchen. As we stood side by side in the verdant meadow which was her front yard, Ruth added, as much in amazement as in sadness, “A year ago this time, both our mothers were alive.”

    Ruth King Porter is an American blueblood whose antecedents hark back to a woman who held a door open for George Washington. I am the Canadian-born daughter of refugees. My mother, a woman who survived three invasions and the Warsaw Ghetto, later in life became prominent in Holocaust education. Many people find my mother’s story repellent and turn away from any mention of it, whereas Ruth and her husband Bill were fascinated. Ruth did for me what I had done for my mother; she listened. And she encouraged me to tell my mother’s story.

    Six months after that, I was back on the farm. Ruth and Bill acknowledged what would have been my mother’s birthday by lighting large candles in a spectacularly tangled chandelier made entirely of logs. Through the wall-sized picture window we watched the cold autumn rain and wind lash the last leaves off a forest full of trees. As we ate hot squash and a pot full of peas grown in Ruth’s garden, the lit log chandelier shone, the tree-bark-shaded lamps glowed, and the wood stove burned.

    I have been back to Ruth and Bill’s farm several times since. In between visits Ruth does for me what her grandfather did for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Marjorie Rawlings: she writes to me and elicits writing from me, reads and critiques my material, encourages, cajoles, indicates where and when she believes I have veered off-track, and gently nudges me back. Clutching the psychic lifeline tossed to me by the descendant of a legendary literary editor, I live and work alone and in growing peace in my suburban Montreal apartment, producing a memoir of my mother. My mother knew that my writing would sustain me after she was gone. Ruth Porter’s mentorship sustained me during the darkest days of my life.

    S Nadja Zajdman_HeadshotS. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. Her short stories and non-fiction pieces have been featured in newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies across North America, in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. In 2012 Zajdman published the related short story collection Bent Branches, which spans four continents and seventy years in the life of a family. Recently Zajdman completed a second short story collection, as well as the above-mentioned memoir of her mother, the noted Holocaust activist and educator Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman, who passed away at the end of 2013.

    Photo credit: MaxPixel (header banner)

  • Copyright: What’s the Big Deal?— By Julie Barlow

    Copyright: What’s the Big Deal?— By Julie Barlow

    The Federal government is in the process of revising the Copyright Act. If you don’t think that matters to writers, think again.

    I’m always surprised to see blank stares on writers’ faces when I launch into a speech about copyright. Some of them aren’t clear why copyright really matters. Others aren’t sure what copyright even is. Fair enough—it’s not the sexiest topic in the writing world. But even if you don’t notice it, it’s fundamental to our business.

    Here’s why. I am a non-fiction author of six books and a magazine writer. To earn my living I sell the right to use my work, either to publishers who pay me advances and royalties or to magazines who pay me fees to publish my articles. For most of my twenty-five-year career, this revenue has constituted most of my income.

    Simply put, copyright law is what makes it possible for me to get paid for my work. The Oxford dictionary defines copyright as: “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.” That’s me—the originator. The Copyright Act is what legally makes my work mine as soon as I create it, and mine to sell.

    It sounds solid in principle, and I wish it was. Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to enforce my copyright and get paid for it. So I jumped at the opportunity to attend a hearing hosted by the federal government’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, held May 8 in downtown Montreal.

    First, let me explain why it’s getting harder to make money from copyright. The reason, in a nutshell, is the Internet and digitization. By making it easier to “publish” and “distribute” creative work, the Internet has made many, many consumers of culture think they should get what’s online for free. The ripple effect in the publishing industry has led to dramatically less revenue for publishers, magazines, and of course writers.

    “By making it easier to “publish” and “distribute” creative work, the Internet has made many, many consumers of culture think they should get what’s online for free.”

    Magazine revenues fell when advertisers turned to online outlets. So magazines are trying to increase their profits by demanding (and the word is not too strong) more copyright from writers, but for the same fee. Whereas the standard when I started publishing in 1995 was to sell first publication rights (giving the magazine the right to publish it once), I now have to sign contracts in which I hand over the right to resell my articles in any form, in any language, anywhere on the planet, sometimes for periods longer than the rest of my life. I used to resell my pieces, sometimes up to five times. Now that’s impossible. Some magazines have even demanded I give them “moral rights” to my work, which means they can alter my work any way they want without my permission – or even take my name off it (I don’t work for those ones).

    The case in book publishing is a little harder to explain. The industry as a whole is suffering from the forces of technology and book advances to authors are falling. When I Google my own work, I discover so many sites offering free (i.e., illegal) PDFs of my books that I can’t keep track of them anymore. And neither can my publisher.

    In 2012, the Conservative government recognized that the Internet and digital economy were changing the dynamics of publishing, so it set out to revise the Copyright Act, originally passed in 1921, to take digital realities into account. But the resulting revisions made it harder for both writers and publishers to earn money. The Act already stipulated situations when consumers don’t have to pay creators. For example, “fair dealing” allows you to share one of my articles with a friend for personal consumption without infringing my copyright. The 2012 revisions broadened fair dealing to include situations like “education.” The problem was, the revised Copyright Act didn’t stipulate how much of the work could be used without infringement. The result? Universities and schools across Canada have been refusing to pay fees for copies of my articles or excerpts from my books. Since 2013, the revenue that Access Copyright collects from universities, schools, and other institutions to distribute to writers has declined by 80 percent.

    As a writer, what do I want the government do to about this? I’m not expecting them to turn back the clock—the Copyright Act has to be adapted to work in the digital world. But most writers would agree that in this already difficult context, we deserve at least as much protection as we had before, not less.

    “As a writer, what do I want the government do to about this?”

    Today, the government appears to recognize the 2012 revision was a misstep. One committee member told me in private that the previous committee let copyright users like universities pretty much dominate the agenda during the last reform, while we creators had little say. So this year the government decided to go back to the drawing board and start by asking for our input.

    At the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology meeting on May 8, about thirty-five creators spoke during the “open mic session.” We each got two minutes to make our case. The vast majority told their own variation on a common tale: over the last 20 years it’s become dramatically more difficult to earn money from our work because it’s harder to get anyone that should pay for the privilege of reading (writers’) or listening to (musicians’) or looking at (photographers’) work to actually pay for it.

    Creators are looking to the government to strengthen the copyright law so it protects our interests. For example, this means minimizing exceptions to fair dealing. I told the committee: “Some people own real estate and make money by selling it. I own copyright and make money by charging magazines and publishers for the right to publish my writing. Why would I be expected to donate my work for free to people who are making money using my work?” (Last time I checked, universities weren’t charities and professors didn’t work for free.)

    “Why would I be expected to donate my work for free to people who are making money using my work?”

    I actually feel a strange kinship with the taxi drivers and hotel owners out there whose livelihood is threatened by digital technology in the form of Uber and Airbnb. The difference, of course, is that the general public seems to get why taxi drivers and hotel owners ask for protection, whereas few understand how infringing on copyright takes money directly out of creators’ pockets.

    This time, I hope the government listens to creators. If they don’t, I’m not sure how we can be expected to make all the stuff people want to copy in the first place.

    I encourage other QWF members and all creators to draw on their own experience and submit a brief to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, explaining why copyright is important to creators. Here’s the link.

    JulieBarlow_headshot

    Julie Barlow is a Montreal-based magazine writer and author of books on language and France, including her latest, The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed (St. Martin’s Press) and The Story of French, winner of the 2007 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction. She teaches the Quebec Writers’ Federation workshop, Narrative Non-Fiction: Finding the Story Among the Facts. Visit her at nadeaubarlow.com.

    Photo credits: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images (header banner); Julia Marois (headshot)

  • Dreadlines: Conquering the Fear of Submission—by Nicola Sibthorpe

    Dreadlines: Conquering the Fear of Submission—by Nicola Sibthorpe

    I am bad at submitting my work. Too often I build up rejection in my mind to be a personal commentary on my writing and on my future as a writer. Yet rejection, as any writer can tell you, is anything but final.

    First there is the self-rejection. I find it difficult to tell when a piece of work is done. I nitpick and fuss over it during the editing process until I resent the work. All I see are its faults. When I feel like I can still improve upon it, I don’t want to submit a piece to an editor or contest judge.

    Setting aside a piece is sometimes the most effective way of continuing to love a piece. I can return to it weeks, or months, or even years, later to rediscover the bits that worked and fix the parts that didn’t. I find editing difficult to do until I’ve put distance between myself and the work. Confidence is important in publishing, and it’s easier to be confident in my abilities as a writer when I can read the work as an outsider.

    “I nitpick and fuss over it during the editing process until I resent the work.”

    Then there’s the fear of outside rejection. The faceless and powerful jury intimidates me. I wrote the poem, “Artemisia Absinthium,” in the first year of my undergrad, and the editing I did for it was minimal. I remember the poem developed naturally from its source material. It poured out in one sitting. I was excited and passionate about it, and I remained so when I submitted it the first time to Headlights, a journal published by graduate students in the English Department of Concordia University.

    This was my second time submitting to a publication, and I saw it as a low-risk way to practice the process. Having it accepted gave me the boost in confidence I needed to begin considering larger competitions and publications.

    Less than a year later, I submitted the now-published poem to the QWF Literary Prize for Young Writers. It felt like the next step. I had submitted my piece to a journal that was unpaid and circulated almost exclusively within Concordia, and now I could submit it to a competition that was professionally judged and would potentially reach a wider audience.

    Submitting it was hard, but waiting for a response was easy. I had been working on making rejection a thing to look forward to, saving each email and using them as a mark of pride. The best ones included a note of encouragement or advice that I could proudly print off to remind myself that I was learning and growing as a writer.

    “I had been working on making rejection a thing to look forward to, saving each email and using them as a mark of pride.”

    Submitting to the QWF prize was the culmination of several important lessons and writing practices. When I heard the positive news—I’d won!—what was even more exciting than receiving the award was receiving the jury’s comments. I am a staunch believer in the work no longer belonging to the author once it has been released into the world. One of the most rewarding parts is learning what other people thought of a piece without your input or thought process. Having the opportunity to share my work with a larger community, and to meet so many wonderful Quebec and Canadian authors at the QWF Awards Gala, is an experience I will cherish fondly for the rest of my life.

    NicolaSibthorpeLindaMorra
    Nicola Sibthorpe receives the inaugural QWF Literary Prize for Young Writers for a published short story, poem or work of non-fiction by writers age 16 to 24. You can read Nicola’s winning piece, “Artemisia Absinthium,” in Carte Blanche.

    NSibthrope_headshotNicola Sibthorpe is a Montreal-born, Creative Writing MA student at Concordia University. She is interested in folktale and mythology, and the subversions that accompany them. She was the inaugural winner of the QWF’s Literary Prize for Young Writers in 2017. Beyond spending her days writing, she is also a teacher, and she enjoys spending time with her cat and a good cup of tea. You can find her on Twitter @NicolaSibthorpe.

    Photo Credits: Roy Blumenthal (header banner); John Fredericks (Nicola Sibthorpe receives prize); Michael Araujo (headshot)

  • Coming to My Senses: The Healing Properties of Fiction—By April Ford

    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.

    AprilFordApril 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)

  • What’s the refrain you keep circling back to?—by Jess Zimmerman

    What’s the refrain you keep circling back to?—by Jess Zimmerman

    The last personal essay I wrote started out as a travel guide. I wanted to write about secret spaces in Berlin, just a list of interesting off-the-beaten-path options for tourists—the kind of thing you might find in an in-flight magazine. Instead it turned into a lyrical 3,000-word piece about love and literature. “I didn’t mean this to wind up this way,” I lamented in a writers’ chat room, “but it’s just my personality. Everything I write boils down to ‘remember that time my marriage failed?’”

    “I feel you,” said my friend Angela Chen. “Sometimes I feel like all my essays come back to the thesis ‘I was a very anxious person and now I’m less anxious.’” Amused by the idea that we could express our entire writing careers in one sentence, I put out a call on Twitter: If you’re a writer of personal work, what’s the refrain you keep circling back to?

    The exercise proved to be wildly popular; I got nearly 100 responses. (By comparison, I had a recent tweet about gun control go mini-viral, getting about 1,500 retweets; there were still fewer than half as many replies to that tweet than to this one.) The idea of an obsessive writing theme struck a nerve. Most of us, it seemed, were using our writing to send constant, repetitive signals of personal distress: “I’m grieving,” “I’m sick,” “I’ve been abused.”

    Some examples:

    • “Grief permeates every aspect of my life but somehow I’m still alive.”
    • “Parenting is difficult and tiring, but magical sometimes. My kids are funny. Also, did I mention I’m tired, demoralized, and depressed?”
    • “My brother died. My other brother and I survived by clinging to one another. Then he died too. Despite it all, I wound up okay, and loved, and in a real place. But everyone died.”
    • “I am very ill and being very ill sucks.”
    • “I’ve suffered more sexual violence than I realized, but I’ve discovered x about it and I’m still not okay.”
    • “I want to be a better person, but it’s hard.”
    • “I’m terrified.”
    • “Please like me. Please.”

    “If you’re a writer of personal work, what’s the refrain you keep circling back to?”

    Dozens of people recognized immediately that everything we wrote, if you boiled it down, was an expression of the same hole in our hearts. I imagined us as castaways, trying to signal for help in any way we could: fires on the beach, messages in bottles, Morse code cast blindly into the stratosphere, each one carrying the same SOS. I’m terrified. I’m terrified. .. / .- — / – . .-. .-. .. ..-. .. . -..

    “Most of us, it seemed, were using our writing to send constant, repetitive signals of personal distress.”

    But I also started to notice refrains that stood out from the rest: people who had thought about what their individual obsessions meant for the reader. Maybe they’d taken the assignment more seriously than I had (I hadn’t really meant it as an assignment, after all!), or maybe they were just naturally more giving writers than me, more immediately attuned to the way their work was not only a personal exercise but a vector to bring value to others. Some of the best responses:

    • “I don’t know anything and have never known anything and no one ELSE knows anything and we are all striving after meaning and truth together.”
    • “Wrestling with how the labels we put on ourselves are always inadequate, which I’ve always known cause I’m biracial.”
    • “Shaky individual kindness is all we have because there is no system that will not ultimately betray you.”
    • “If you think closely enough about something, you can begin to understand why it will inevitably one day make you sad.”
    • “I’m plagued by a congenital loneliness and it’s probably some recent ancestor’s fault. But a lot of us are connected by how disconnected we are, and that’s kinda cool.”

    I describe myself sometimes as being obsessed with generosity in writing (other people’s, but also my own). So I was a little embarrassed about how self-centered and parsimonious my refrain was, stacked against some of the ones that spoke to me. An account of my individual history—“remember the time my marriage failed”—gives almost nothing to the reader besides a little more knowledge about me (not a particularly valuable currency). Angela’s SOS call—“I used to be anxious and now I’m less anxious”—was also inward-looking, with no hint of what value it might contain for the reader. Had we both been failing to live up to the principles of generosity?

    Luckily, I’m an avid reader of Angela’s (I even suggested one of her essays as a reading for the workshop I’m teaching for QWF on March 24!), so I know that her tongue-in-cheek description doesn’t say it all. Though the form of her essays is sometimes “I was a very anxious person and now I’m less anxious,” the substance is always something like “we seek certainty because uncertainty makes us anxious, but uncertainty can also be beautiful.” In other words, while her essays are sometimes about her, they’re always really about you. That’s always my goal, too—to say something about you, by way of saying something about me. Maybe I just didn’t finish describing my refrain; maybe it’s something more like “remember that time my marriage failed? Well, it was a distillation of the messed-up messages women get about love.”

    “That’s always my goal, too—to say something about you, by way of saying something about me.”

    When I initially wrote the tweet, I’d only been trying to make a self-deprecating joke about my particular monomanias. What I discovered, instead, was a reminder to take a step back from my work and recognize not only what refrain I kept on playing, but why. Why does my writing tend to tread familiar paths—why does all our writing do this, apparently? And what value can that hold?

    It’s not really a mystery why that tweet resonated; humans in general tend to want to communicate our pain and have it heard, and we keep worrying away at the same old griefs because, frankly, communication is hard and it doesn’t always work the first time, or the first twenty. We’re isolated on our separate rocky shores, so we keep broadcasting the same distress signal over and over, trying to get someone’s attention, trying to make a connection from our desert island across the huge gulf of the sea. The challenge, I think, is to make our signal not an SOS but a lighthouse: not I’m in distress and I need someone to know it, but there’s danger here, I’ve seen it, and I’m telling you before it’s too late. Recognizing the signal you keep sending, and how you send it, may be the first step in refining that signal into something that will help prevent wreck after wreck.

    “The challenge, I think, is to make our signal not an SOS but a lighthouse.”

    Jess_headshotJess Zimmerman is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. @j_zimms jesszimmerman.com

    Jess Zimmerman will lead the Quebec Writers’ Federation workshop “Gazing Beyond the Navel: Personal Essay for a Global Audience” in Montreal on March 24. This workshop is NOW FULL. To be added to the waiting list, please email workshops@qwf.org.

    Photo credits: See-ming Lee (header banner), Helen Rosner (headshot)

  • What Playing Piano Taught Me About Writing-by Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt

    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.

    CRV_HeadshotCarly 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