A talented woman, Thanh is not only an award winning writer, but also performs in a rockabilly band. Her own book launch didn’t include a reading, but musical performance by her band, Jukebox Jezebels, and her own rough drafts, some on laundry tickets or receipts, as art hung in the space. Her proud husband, Hank Engel, even wrote a song to commemorate the occasion of his wife’s first book, “Suko Wrote a Book.”

I met with the lovely Victoria-based author in the Vancouver Art Gallery Café to discuss her new book, her hoping and waiting, the influence of winning prizes and of course, writing.

Yasuko Thanh's debut book, Floating Like the Dead.

This is your first book. It’s out in the world. How do you feel?

It’s great to have the work out there, but now those stories are out in the world and there is nobody to speak for them or defend them, they have to stand on their own and speak for themselves. Up until now, friends or family are reading them, so I could have a discussion and now hopefully they’ll be read by people who don’t know me.

I feel confident that will happen. I didn’t know you and I read them. When did you start writing the stories in the collection?

Even though it’s a first book it does represent selections from a fairly large body of work that I had when I first met Anita Chong at McClelland & Stewart. I’d submitted everything I’d written to her, just, ‘here you go.’ I had no idea what makes a collection. She guided me through the process of selecting stories. Certainly some are ten years old, some are brand new and some that are from my master’s thesis at UVic.

There are stories from undergrad?

Yes. The Journey Prize winning story is from a second year workshop, from an assignment given to me by a teacher I adore, Stephen Price.

How did the Journey Prize change your whole writerly life?

It didn’t change the writerly life so much, but certainly it changed the perception that the work was getting in the wider world. Up to then it was just putting things in envelopes and sending them to literary magazines. And hoping and hoping and waiting and waiting and hoping. After winning the Journey Prize I got back from Toronto and there was a message on my phone from (literary agent) Denise Bukowski, and within the space of a week, M&S had offered me a publication contract as well. M&S had been in contact with me before the Journey Prize, which was one of the reasons I felt it was really good to go with that house.

They had already shown interest in your work.

I’d been talking to Anita but nothing had been firmed up until the Journey Prize win. I knew she was in there fighting the good fight for the work.

It’s nice to have a champion.

It really is. So for me it wasn’t about shopping around to find a better publisher and find a better deal because Anita was so great.

You did your undergrad and graduate degree at UVic. What was your experience in the MFA program and what are your thoughts on MFA programs?

My personal experience with workshops was mixed. I think a lot depends on who you have as a teacher. It’s hard to generalize about MFA programs because of the personality dynamics, so what works for one writer might not work for another. For instance, my experience with Stephen Price within the context of this institutional program was wonderful. It opened up a whole new world for me in terms of directions I could take my fiction in. But someone else in the same workshop could have had a completely different experience that is just as valid.

A lot of it does have to do with personality and how people approach their own work and sometimes that changes as the result of a workshop and sometimes it doesn’t. There’s a tendency to lump them in together or say that all programs are the same and everyone will have the same experience and produce the exact same type of writing.

One thing that might be hard for people coming into a program is that there’s a bit of danger in listening too much to the feedback. And that’s where one might get that thing where the material sounds the same. Because if you integrate too many of the comments without thinking, I understand where this person is coming from, but in this case I’m choosing to stick my heels in.

Did you always want to write?

Being a writer is great because whatever your interest happens to be you can somehow manifest that in terms of your writing. It’s a carry all. I never wanted to be a writer, I’ve just always written. Then I reached a point where I decided to start sending my work out and turn what I do into something we call art. So that part was a conscious decision.

The talented author herself.

There’s a lot of historical detail woven into the collection. How was your research experience?

Oh, it was fun.

That’s nice to hear. Fun with research. Did you get addicted to research and just want to keep doing it, or got so involved in research that you weren’t writing?

You really have to watch it. You pretend you’re really writing, tell yourself you’re just doing research for one more day.

The clothing details in that first story, “Spring-Blade Knife”, set in Vancouver in the ’40s, are amazing. The white shoes the character gets are so integral and visually appealing.

That was actually part of a story that this old rockabilly guy from the Elvis days told, Hank, my husband. He’s in the rockabilly hall of fame. He’s this cool cat I’ve never met and he was wearing these white shoes and talking about how people were making fun of them. So I thought, what if these shoes start a fight?

Street gangs were a part of Vancouver at that time. In the story it’s quite innocent, but then someone pulls out a knife. It’s quite shocking. Someone’s crossed the line. I mean, it wasn’t friendly, they had knuckle-dusters and chains, which I learned from my reading of old newspaper clippings. Mostly at that time it was hand-to-hand combat. Then you go home and fix your bloody nose and go back at it the next weekend. In the story the character just loses control.

The protagonist is a very sympathetic character. You definitely have a level of empathy for people who are on the fringe or are outsiders.

This is a question that’s come up a few times now. It wasn’t something I set out to do. In having the collection together as a whole, it’s come out as a common theme that strings them all together. I have sympathy for the underdog.

The title story really encapsulates that. It was a physical separation for those people. And they’re lepers. We use leper as a descriptive term to talk about people that are obviously not lepers, like the office leper. You take it to the logical. That story must have involved a lot of research.

There wasn’t all that much out there. I was leant the book A Measure of Value by C. Yorath. He compiled all the available research material into this slim volume and he interspersed it with creative non-fiction, breathed life into those characters and represented them as human beings. I understood later that there was a movie about D’Arcy Island called Colony of Dreams. Apart from his book there wasn’t much out there.

The cool thing is I came from another interview today and the interviewer is also working on his MFA and after reading my piece, it inspired him to write his own. And then someone else will read his piece and write another piece. And soon it will be part of the literary dialogue. And more than that something that people in the general public will come to know.

Do you want to talk about your experience with M&S?

It’s been great. It’s a short story collection. Who buys short story collections? Especially short story collections by unknown writers? It’s so awesome.

I feel like my writing has grown so much by working with Anita. Working with an editor who asks me the questions that I need to be asked so I can really push the fiction as far forward as that story is capable of going. Sometimes it’s clear in your mind, but she is so astute.  She’s like a set director. More light here.

So lovely to have a dialogue with someone like that.

We had a record six-hour session and totally picked apart a story. It was great.

How was writing with children around?

This year is different. It’s my first year out of school and I’m not teaching and I have a lot of time when the kids are in school. At one point I had more free time and I stalled.

You were on a roll and it came to a halt.

It was weird. Sometimes the work stalls and then in hindsight you realize it was because there was some fundamental flaw with the work. And I didn’t consciously recognize that, but subconsciously I knew.  I changed my approach, then I would give myself a time, say 45 minutes to do something and then it started to work again.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a novel. I wanted to find a setting that intrigued me enough to keep going there. Create something haunting.

It’s loosely based on a side-show performer. She was completely covered in hair, she sang in three languages, she danced. In the book the woman has the same physical condition as her. She married her manager and made big money for that time.

What other writers do you admire?

Toni Morrison. I think she’s just the best. I pick her sentences apart. There’s so much movement. Her sentences are long and her syntax is interesting but her words are simple but powerful.  My new love is Jose Saramago; Michael Turner; I really admire and continue to admire him. I did get a chance to meet him and I didn’t faint or anything.

You were cool.

I wasn’t cool. I was like, is my voice really high?

Thank you so much for letting me talk to you.

Yeah. I enjoyed our conversation very much.

It’s a big week for Daniel, and not just because he’s launching his first book. As well as being a stellar poet, delightful conversationalist, stylish and lovely human being and part-time DJ (DJ That’s So Raven) Daniel is also the editor-in-chief of Poetry is Dead magazine, whose 5^th issue launched on Friday March 30^that Project Space. To add to his seemingly never-ending workload, Daniel also curated Arte Factum, a poetry chapbook exhibition whose opening was the same evening in the same space. Despite all this he found time to invite me into his kitchen to share my cheeses, enjoy his beer and talk writing (it’s enjoyable), self-promotion, getting readers to read poetry and pop stars.

Look, a shiny new book!

This is your first book and now it’s going out into the world. People are going to look at it. How does that feel?

It’s deeply frightening, because you spend so much time worrying about your first book and then it’s done and you have to just wait and see what people say.

Do you think the weight you put on it being your first book is the measure by which you’ll be judged from now on?

It feels like that, but thankfully poetry has such a low readership rate that I could bomb and nobody would ever know it.

You are fortunate in that regard. You don’t think that’s you managing expectations?

No. If there was a bigger readership it would be a concern if it’s a big flop. Because there’s not a big readership it’s just an entry level thing. I remember having this conversation with Carmine Starnino and a first book is a first book and people know that and they don’t expect it to be the most genius piece of work.

You could pull that idea out of any review anywhere: it reads like a first book.

Yeah. At the same time I deeply fear reviews of it. Because that’s the actual test. You can get a publisher to publish your book, but getting readers to like it or having reviewers review it so readers will read it is another story.

Once it’s out there what are those next steps? So you just give it to a publisher and they’re like yeah, whatever, publish that sucker and then it’s out there. How do you make people care about what you’ve created?

I think with small presses, and mainly for poetry, unfortunately you have to be interesting as well. You can’t just publish an interesting poetry book. You have to do interesting things. You have to consistently say interesting things on Twitter. Or…

The Facebook.

The Facebook. You have to be popular. It’s super weird and not what you expect. We as writers are generally supposed to be introverts and we’re in this zone where we have to be extroverts and it’s exhausting and you can tell all of us hate it.

That is very true. Do you think you’re good at the persona side? I personally think you are. In the book, on the Internet, in person. I’m not saying it’s not taxing for you, but you obviously do have a handle on it.

I agree, I do. I don’t like that I have to do it. It takes time and an extensive amount of energy. I also have to do it for Poetry is Dead which is to promote other peoples’ writing and now I have to switch it so I’m the focus.

Your job is two-fold right now, doing all of that for your magazine and your own work.

I’m letting go a bit of the editor work for Poetry is Dead because I realize I don’t have enough time to do my own writing. I really like writing. I enjoy it. Whether it gets published or not is not my big interest. It’s the fact that I take time to actually spend writing, creating these worlds. That’s my problem with self marketing, it’s like you publish a book, you think you’re good to go. Really, you publish you have to make launch parties that are interesting so people will come so people will review so you can reach the 1000 print run. Which is very small, but poetry is impossibly hard to sell. Because no one wants to spend $17 on a poetry book.

Poetry is Dead # 5

I mean, what are people buying with that $17 dollars?

Three coffees. Or in my case they’re buying two beers at a very fancy gay establishment.

I agree with what you’re saying about how exhausting that is. But it also really warms my heart to hear you say, I love writing, I want to write, I don’t care if it gets published. I think that’s something people always miss. That the goal isn’t necessarily to constantly achieve publication. That just tickles my heart area, that you want to do a good job.

I’m just glad I tickled your heart.

Tell me about your experience with Talonbooks.

Talonbooks was really good to work with. It was kind of unexpected to get published in the first place. I had written a poem for my friend, Garry Thomas Morse, so I just wanted him to read it, but he wanted to read the whole book. And I had just finished it so I handed it to him and he said let’s meet for coffee. So then four days later we met and he asks if he can publish the book. I didn’t really believe him.

You were skeptical? You’re like, this can’t happen to me?

Pretty much. I sent him 15 or 20 emails over a few months, being like, for reals? Just because I wrote you a poem you don’t have to publish me.

That’s not how it works. There is no ”I wrote you a poem you have to publish my entire manuscript” exchange program. That’s not a precedent set in Canadian publishing. Yet.

I get that I’m a nice person, but you don’t have to publish it because I’m a nice person. He would send nice emails back saying yes, I genuinely appreciate your work, I would actually like to publish it and wouldn’t publish it otherwise. So that lasted three months of me freaking out. Until I signed the contract, and even then.

Is that a fake contract?

Oh no it’s 2012, the world’s going to end.

You know what, Davie Street Translations might bring about the apocalypse.

The one poetry book that destroyed the world.

You don’t hear that. Ever.

Because it’s going to make gay guys riot and that will cause the collapse of capitalism.

Why are gay guys going to riot over your book?

They’re not.

Well, if they were.

If gay guys were going to riot it would be because one, their stories are being put forward. Two, because the word play will blow their minds.

One more point. Three points.

Three, because it pokes fun at gay consumerism.

I think those are all good points, and they encapsulate what the book is about.

The book is totally about boners.

It’s about boners and poetic devices.

It’s all about enjambment.

It totally is. It’s not just about the gay experience, or your experience, but about a Vancouver experience. Was it your intention to capture what it’s like to be here?

A lot of times in writing groups, or in poetry, people focus on making it as broad as possible, trying to not put it in a place, so it will reach a broader audience. Which I think is bullshit, because how many books are set in New York or wherever?

Daniel has a heart on for chapbooks.

Not just books but iconic books.

Yeah. Everyone knows you can locate a reader and it’ll still reach a broader audience. I wanted to make it as local as possible. I wanted it to be local because it was a project more than anything. I wanted it to be specific to Vancouver as a space. The gay experience came about from the people I know and hang out with and my own experience.

I like what you’re saying because the title ties into that. Davie Street is very specific and the concept of translation brings these stories and experiences from a specific place and gives them a new language with the book you’ve written.

Each thing is a translation of an event or idea. Like the graffiti or text on walls.

The graffiti is a great touch.

We got pretty drunk to do that. My friend Brandon Gaukel is a photographer and I got him to do the photos and basically got him wasted and we walked around.

And that ties into another thing that felt great. If you were to take the book, open it up and go out it’s like a walking tour of gay Vancouver, visually and atmospherically everything is in the poems. You add the visual element of graffiti. Like photos in a travel guide. Oh, there’s the bathroom at The Odyssey.

Here’s the body hair from that guy at the Pumpjack.

You also address body image and physicality and how that factors in. It’s something people understand as a part of gay culture, cruising and Grindr, where dudes are trying to pick up other dudes, but that vanity is more often associated with women.

It’s taking all the male insecurities with body and height and heightening them to extremes. We’re played to in consumerist ways the same way women are. Which is why those advertisement poems replicate what advertising uses to get you to purchase products, to get washboard abs. If you buy our product this is what you’ll look like. There’s also an excessive amount of porn. There’s no counter-check to that. It’s free reign. To use really academic terms we’ve internalized “the gaze.”  Which is why I make “the gays” joke.

Even within that there are other groups and different types of physicality that are favoured in those groups.

Each one has their own set goal. It’s almost like there’s no room for people to be different. We’ve entered this new stage in gay culture. Being different used to be the thing, but as we become mainstream we start to buy into specific heteronormative ideals and in the end becomes not about progress, but about replicating what’s already wrong with society.

And that funnels back into consumerism and the commercialization of sexuality and love.

There’s a reason that gay males have such a low life satisfaction. There are a lot of mental health issues, a lot of depression and a lot of it can come up from being closeted, but when they come out they enter a culture that is very demanding in terms of your looks and who you are and who you know and it doesn’t feel that it’s the safest space either.

Like in your poem, “Gay Christmas or Halloween”.  It has the funniest and saddest lines. You describe all these people dressed like different characters, iconic gay figures and at the end one of the costumes is “you. ”

someone is dressed as you
but you’re not popular
so no one gets it.

To have someone dressed as you, but you’re not popular so no one gets it. It’s horribly sad, but also horribly funny. You’re taking all those ideas we’ve been talking about and putting them in a personal realm. That personal element is very grounding.

There are a lot of lines about people who are lost in a culture that’s focussed on all those things. A lot of these poems are not my stories, they’re other people’s or composites. One poem was about a specific incident. I was sitting by this guy at a bar and we were talking and I decided to try to have a conversation with him. He seemed really shy and nervous. I asked him about his hobbies or what he likes to do. And he couldn’t think of anything. So he finally said he likes making crafts. And then complained that he starts to make crafts but never finishes them. And I said failing to make crafts is also a hobby. Then he said he does have a hobby: he grows his nails. And he showed me these long perfect nails. And they were beautiful. At first I felt sorry for him. He seemed a bit out of it and I didn’t know if he was on drugs or not. And later I saw him going wild, dancing, sweating up a storm and I was still just sitting there. You find your happiness in a world and my instant reaction of judgement is something society ingrains in us. Why aren’t you doing all these interesting things?

And why is that so threatening to people?

I have all these things that I do, but I don’t have the enjoyment from just letting lose and having fun.

Maybe, unlike him, you also were not on MDMA. The MDMA comes in later. In the alphabet drug poems.

The poet. So dreamy and talented.

Those poems took so much crowd sourcing. Those were all stories I heard. One of those things I did, but otherwise it was all other people’s stories.

The order of those poems is amazing. Some are so truthful and often funny and then PCP shows up and it’s harsh, it’s sad.

We use a lot of camp to deal with situations and experiences. If I made them all humorous, which is what I tend to do anyway, I would have skipped over so much.

That thread runs through the whole book. Going from something really funny or campy or light and then going to sad or even violent and scary places. This is all the shit we have to worry about.

Once again the whole thing was a project. There were about 40 different ideas and then I did all those 40 ideas and interweaved those together. And one of those things was to read as much gay Vancouver poets as possible. Everything that came my way. A lot of Robin Blaser also Billeh Nickerson, Michael V. Smith, Sean Horlor, bill bissett. I was reading Seminal, which is where I got a lot of the poets from.

There aren’t just literary allusions, but so many pop culture references in the book too.

I wanted to make sure I was using the language of our community. A lot of times I could have gone for this really whimsical way of writing, but that would have read as false. It had to come from the mouths of people.

Daniel this has been really delightful. But we didn’t get to talk about Beyoncé.

What, you want to talk about Beyoncé?

Wait. First I want to ask you about this: You reference both Gaga and Madonna in the book. Do you feel the current Lady Gaga-Madonna feud is real?

I do. Because even Madonna knows that her work, and this is ironic, is reductive.

I knew you were going to bring up reductive. That interview is amazing.

So my favourite thing about that was hearing a remix on a friend’s wall of her saying, “reductive ” and then this music. (DZ makes some dance beat sounds.)

Also Beyoncé, was she really pregnant?

Yes.

Also, how beautiful is Beyoncé?

I love Beyoncé.

(We high five.)

***

Davie Street Translations (Talonbooks, 2012)  is available now. You can buy it and add to the poetry readership. 

I interviewed Gauer about his lovely, sad, poignant first novel, Hold Me Now, (Freehand Books, 2011) a story about the aftermath of a violent hate crime told from the point of view of the father of the victim. Using the tragic, true story of the deadly beating of Aaron Webster in Vancouver’s Stanley Park as inspiration for the inciting plot, Gauer creates an engaging exploration of grief, anger, aging and of how we can all find ourselves broken and in a cycle of fixing ourselves. There are no easy answers, and there’s no single fix, and Gauer’s book eloquently expresses these ideas.

Throughout the interview, Gauer reveals his thoughts on older writers getting more out of MFA programs, WASPy emotions, grief, the truth about men and a personal tragedy that eerily mirrors the emotional depth of suffering present in the novel he’d created as his MFA thesis.

Though this is your first novel, you’ve been writing and have been published in newspapers and magazines, and winning writing prizes for years. How does it feel to have Hold Me Now out in the world?

It’s been immensely satisfying to finally see the book published! I’d pretty much given up on it. I wrote it as my master’s thesis at UBC back in 2005, did some rewrites that year with my thesis advisor, Keith Maillard, and sent it out to agents and publishers. Everyone turned it down, so I gave up on it. After we moved back to Toronto in 2006, I quit creative writing completely. Then through a friend, Susan Olding, who published an essay collection with Freehand, I came to submit the manuscript to Freehand back in 2009. They accepted it that fall, and published the book two years later.

How was your experience working with Freehand?

Excellent. I’ve heard stories from writer friends who publish with big houses that they sometimes work with inattentive, freelance editors 3,000 miles away who don’t understand the book. Robyn Read at Freehand was absolutely terrific: intelligent, critical when required, helpful, supportive and very attentive. She understood exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I feel lucky that I got so much of her time given her overloaded schedule at Freehand. (I think she edited five books in 2011). With a small press you have a personal relationship with the editors, and get significant input into things like jacket design and promotion strategy, and that makes the entire process (in my case two years between acceptance and actual publication date) much more satisfying.

The current book climate is changing and is a little unstable. Sadly, Freehand has temporarily frozen acquisitions and they no longer have an acquisitions editor on staff. How does it feel to have gained a publisher and then learn that they’ve taken these actions?

I spend about $500 a year on books. If every adult middle class Canadian did the same, our publishers would be in much better shape. I think Freehand is very courageous in pursuing a strictly literary strategy in acquisitions, but let’s face it, the odds are against small publishers financially. So Freehand’s struggles, while discouraging, are not a huge surprise.

You began writing Hold Me Now during your time at UBC’s Creative Writing MFA program. In what ways do you feel the program was useful to you? Do you have any further thoughts on the benefits or detriments of MFA programs in general?

I didn’t actually learn much at UBC except that I can write fiction! For me, the most useful part of an MFA program is the time you get to write and the intelligent feedback from a dozen writers at each workshop session. I think the program helps older writers more than younger ones… some of the students were just too young to have much to write about. Far better to be out in the world in your twenties and thirties rather than doing undergrad and postgrad degrees in creative writing. I suspect I would be in the minority on that topic if you polled the other MFA students, though.

Like any master’s program, the MFA is a superb networking tool, a kind of two-year, $8,000 connection to the publishing world. I probably would have published a novel eventually, but the MFA got me there faster.

After Aaron Webster was murdered in Vancouver’s Stanley Park , the story and the crime garnered a lot of media attention. In the novel the protagonist is reluctant to make his grief public or to participate in community grieving. Were you interested in that dynamic, between public and private grief, and the grief of a community, in this case the gay community, versus familial grief? How does public loss change the way a person experiences that loss?

Of course. I wanted [my character] Paul Brenner to be a kind of curmudgeonly “anti” force in the novel, a man who has no interest in public display of any kind, and grief in particular. Perhaps that makes him old fashioned as well, since our current model, enhanced by the Internet and other technologies, is to bare our souls at every opportunity. Brenner is very much a traditional WASP in his reluctance to express himself publicly. Of course he also has problems expressing himself privately, since he’s not an overtly emotional person at all.

Strangely, my granddaughter Amelia died three years before the novel was published, so I have some personal experience with grief. The public expression of our family’s grief, particularly at the memorial service, was very moving and very intense, and yet the private experience has been very difficult, as it is for everyone. It’s true that traditionally the community supported the grieving family, and developed rituals to acknowledge grief. We have the public display now, but not the rituals, so perhaps that’s a loss.

I was very struck at work how some women I knew said kind and helpful things after Amelia’s death, but the men were silent or awkward or simply avoided the whole topic. A death is a kind of litmus test for friends and family, revealing a new side to their personalities that you may not have glimpsed before.

Mr. Gauer himself. Photo credit Andrew Williamson.

Despite the loss he experiences, Paul Brenner isn’t exactly the most likable character, which is one of my favourite aspects of the novel. It’s easy to sympathize with a less prickly character but you chose to make him more complicated, ask the reader to find the humanity in a flawed and difficult man. Was it challenging to wring emotion and empathy from someone like Brenner?

My goal was very simple: to create a realistic middle class, middle aged Canadian male, well educated, professional, successful, whose inner life is unrevealed. To be honest, this wasn’t a challenge at all! It was as easy as pie, because part of myself is in Paul. I can think like him, act like him, feel many of the same emotions, frustrations, desires that he does. The challenge lies more with the reader, I think.

The unlikeable hero is not uncommon in 20th century writing, especially post-war. Meurseult in Camus’ L’Etranger is a classic example, and there are many, many others. I would say it’s part of a post-war agenda around realism, the desire to portray characters as honestly and realistically as possible, without sentimentality.

Middle class life in Canada is bland enough, our edges get worn away pretty early, I think. So I like the idea of literary characters who are eccentric, difficult, unlikeable, who challenge accepted, conventional ways of thinking. I love the scenes where Paul feels a rush of satisfaction when he speaks the truth to someone or says something politically incorrect.

You mention you started writing about the idea of revenge, but Hold Me Now also addresses issues of safety. After his son is killed and his daughter is in New York during 9/11, Paul seems concerned with safety and stability though he himself makes reckless decisions. At one point he accuses Daniel of endangering himself, almost blaming him for his own murder by trolling for sex in Stanley Park, while he himself seeks release through sex. How did you navigate that dichotomy?

Oh, I think I’m just stating the truth about men. We are often hypocritical and most of us love risk, even though we seem outwardly obsessed with safety and order. You’re right, it is a dichotomy. I can’t explain it without lapsing into pseudo-scientific nonsense about our biological drives as males. I feel this very strongly myself; an attraction to risk, especially the physical risk of something challenging like driving motorcycles, hiking alone in the Himalayas, sailing solo across the Strait of Georgia in a small boat, that kind of thing (all of which I’ve done). I’ve taken all sorts of risks in my life. So Paul’s ability to juggle risk and non-risk reflects a lot of my own attitudes.

And again, it just seems realistic to me that Paul would preach one thing to his children and yet act in a completely opposite way. I think we all juggle tremendous contradictions, though men are perhaps less successful than women at aligning our thoughts with our actions.

Family dynamics are always awkward and there are many interesting and complex relationships in the book. Which is your favourite or most interesting relationship in Hold Me Now, or was your favourite to write and explore?

I don’t have children of my own (my partner has a son and daughter, and two grandsons), so I found it quite fascinating in Hold Me Now to try to draw convincing father-son and father-daughter relationships. Paul reflects a lot of me, as I’ve said, yet Daniel and Elizabeth are completely made up and are not based on any actual people I know. Trying to think like a father was difficult but kind of fun too. Paul struggles so much with the expression of his love for his son, and wanting to help him yet knowing he must find his own way in life. Paul feels closer to his daughter, and appreciates her strength and intelligence, but again struggles with the balance between helpful versus overbearing parent.

The personal dimension here is that I have a difficult relationship with my mother, who is 92, and still treats me like a teenager (“Stephen, why didn’t you wear a sweater today? It’s cold outside.”). My partner has an excellent relationship with her adult kids because she respects their judgement, offers advice only when asked and treats them like adults. I think one of the most difficult things about being a parent must be accepting your kids as grown-up adults once they reach their twenties. For most parents, the relationship with adult children lasts much longer than the first twenty years, when they’re young and mostly dependent, so it’s critical to make this relationship work.

Hold Me Now is out now. You can check out more about Stephen on his website and some more of his insights below.

Each month I’ll explore what it means to be an emerging writer. From the big guns to the small presses, I’ll review and profile new books by newly published authors. I’ll interview and discover what these writers are reading, writing, watching, listening to and maybe even eating–their diversity of influence. Writing is hard. Publishing is hard too. But new voices can be awesome and inspiring and surprising. I’ll explore the innovation and invigoration emerging writers are bringing to the Canadian literary table. I can only hope that something here will entice literary admirers to enter into new fulfilling reader-writer relationships that will last for a real long time.

My first ‘first’ is the lovely Heather Jessup. Her debut novel is the gorgeous The Lightning Field (Gaspereau Press, 2011). The story centres on Peter and Lucy Jacobs as they fall in love in post-war Toronto, marry, move to the suburbs, have children and go to work on the Avro Arrow where they are both struck by lightning respectively. In her beautiful prose she details their lives, from small moments that speak to big emotions, to the huge events that mark their story irrevocably. I got on the old Gchat on one of the last days of 2011 to chat with Heather about her novel, her nerves and board games.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms. Heather Jessup

Heather: Hi Dina, I’m here in my PJs with a coffee. Ready when you are.

Dina: I’m also in my PJs with an empty pot of tea. Thanks for agreeing to do this.

Heather: My pleasure!

Dina: You’re my first first-timer!

Heather: Firsts are the most fearful and the most exciting, don’t you think? And then to be a first first-timer. Thank you! I really am so glad someone is writing about this.

Dina: Firsts are exciting. And there’s also that element of putting so much importance or anxiety on ‘firsts’ that you can’t enjoy the good parts about it. Are you enjoying your first book publishing experience?

Heather: Yes. After initial anxieties, I have to say this has been a delightful experience. Last night [Dec. 29th] I got to read with Warren and Matthew Heiti in Sudbury. Warren’s first book of poetry, Hydrologos, also came out this year. The Fromagerie, where the reading was held, was packed with so many people from his life. The same happened to me in Vancouver: high school English and Drama teachers; elementary teachers; family; friends. So sometimes it can feel like the best part of a wedding (until death does one part with a book seems apt). But also the anxiety of putting something very private into the hands of the public–I found this extremely nerve-wracking, and I wasn’t entirely expecting to be so nervous.

Dina: That’s really interesting because as a writer you want people to see your work, but also once it’s out there, it can be judged. You’ve opened yourself up to the good and bad.

Heather: I felt when Andrew [Steeves] at Gaspereau said yes to my book that a lot of questions I hadn’t even thought of asking before came up in my mind. Why publish at all? Why do we do this? Why wouldn’t I just make this book by hand (as I’d done as an editor of Delirium Press with Kate Hall in Montreal, sewing books with friends on a living room floor) and just give them to the people I love?

I had always thought that publishing was the aim of writing, without really questioning it. But when I finally realized I was going to be published, it felt like I was sending a child off to their first day at school. I’d known I’d done what I could, I knew that the book’s teachers were incredible (Michael Winter, Jack Hodgins, Kate Stearns, Andrew Steeves, Lisa Moore), but there might be bullies in the playground. How would my book fair on the playground? I felt nervous.

Dina: (I go on a long tangent about Louis CK and his recent comedy special that he sold on his own website with no middle man for $5 per download.)

I like that there are people out there with that kind of DIY attitude, but in a way that actually works.

Heather: My friend and fellow writer Sarah Selecky just launched a downloadable writing course called Story Is a State of Mind. It’s totally DIY–no publisher, no middle-person. And the students go through the course at their own pace. I like that people can take an idea of what publishing is, what story-making is, and stretch it.

Dina:I think it’s great that people are seeing options instead of feeling hemmed in.

Heather: Jane Siberry did this with her music after her label didn’t produce an album. She just put the album up on her website with pay- what-you-can. I love this kind of thing, just seeing what they can do and who else in the large world is interested.

Dina: And obviously marketing has a lot to do with it. If you’re not going through the right channels, creating interesting ways to get people interested, then they won’t be interested. I just used the word “interested” a whole lot there.

Heather: Well, it’s interesting. It takes a bit of the power away from an industry and lets it be about individuals. Although you’re right that you have to be good at marketing–and that kind of work feels so completely antithetical to me than the work of being still and listening that writing requires. So I worry, too, that the more writers are expected to do the work of business, the less attending and stillness and reading and quiet they might have: the less birds they might notice, the less poetry. That aspect of the drive to DIY makes me a bit sad.

Dina: Do you think marketing/social media interferes with your writing life?

Heather: Yes. Absolutely.

Dina: It can be a great distraction.

Heather: For me I find it important to keep the space I write in quite separate from the space where I post to Facebook and check out people’s tweets and “like” things. I don’t have the internet at my house. My office feels so much more cozy and inviting since doing this. I have better conversations at breakfast. I take the time to cut flowers and put them on my desk. I feel so much more relaxed at my work within the space of my home, knowing that it is cleared of these distractions.

I think both are important (being a part of a broader writing community, and a broader community more generally), but I want my writing time to be as sacred as possible. Call me Romantic, but I think language deserves this. I even sometimes think that words think better with a pen and paper … if that makes sense.

Dina: Some might consider it a luxury to have sacred time, but also it’s good to take any opportunity to put some words together.

Heather: I think the idea of time taken to observe the world as some kind of “luxury” is a mistake. I actually think that taking the time to really taste our food, and really notice our surroundings can change the world.

Dina: Luxury is a dangerous word.

Heather: Yeah. I feel like a writer’s “job” is to attend to the world. And this requires time. And this time is not a luxury … it may well be a mental and environmental necessity. I can’t imagine my life without books. This is why, in the end, I realized that publishing wasn’t crazy–it was the beginning of a conversation. A conversation that can happen in a longer space and in a different time than a Twitter post opens up.

Dina: OK. Time to talk about the book. I had a lovely winter afternoon reading session with The Lightning Field. We had a moment. It was delightful.

This is the book. Its called The Lightning Field. It's swell.

Heather: Oh. I’m so pleased you had a moment.

Dina: Your writing is beautiful, very poetic and it’s also very tender. There’s something akin to Richard Yates’ broken American dream, but much less hard, less bitter, grotesque. The broken Canadian dream is a bit different.

Heather: Hmmm … interesting. I guess like most things, Canadians tend to be more modest in their existence than Americans are (at least in the clichés of the two countries). Maybe Canadians are even modest when it comes to broken dreams too.

Dina: Not to say that there isn’t darkness in the book. As a writer you seem unafraid of light and dark which is admirable and also makes reading your work enjoyable. You need that balance.

Heather: Exactly. But I feel like sadness can come from unreasonable expectations, and then it can also come out of the blue. I guess I wanted the book to be about the everydayness that happens after these big moments take place that we don’t always have control over.

Dina: And also in contrast to the big event of the Avro Arrow project and the squelching of that project.

Heather: Yes. I said that even Canada’s broken dreams are modest, but that plane wasn’t modest. It really was an incredible feat of engineering that many men and women in Canada worked extremely hard to build. To have one’s government then shut something this exciting down; to have so many young, intelligent people unemployed. The blow of that must have felt tragic, but the dailiness of it would have been just trying to get by and that seems like the story to me. What the shopping list was like after the cancellation: no bananas, bulk cereal, powdered milk. The reality of these huge political decisions that are felt in the sphere of a kitchen, or felt by a kid.

Dina: If you Google ‘broken Canadian dream’ the first thing that pops up is about the Avro Arrow.

Heather: Hmmm … wow.

Dina: And now people will know that I Googled that. I’m not ashamed of my Google search history.

Heather: My Google search history would be crazy … man, that would be a fun thing to list: last ten searches.

Dina: That should be another column. The Google searches of authors.

Heather: Totally!

Dina: You have a familial connection to the project as well. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Heather: Sure. My grandpa worked on the Avro Arrow. When I was growing up we would go to plane shows and aerospace museums with him, and I totally did not understand why. My dad suggested I interview my grandpa about his work on the plane. I recorded an interview on a tiny cassette recorder I’d bought at Canadian Tire. I asked things like “did women work there?” “what did your office look like?” I even asked, “what did you do each day at work?” But really, that’s sort of a hard thing to answer. Work is cumulative, I guess.

Dina: But I think those kinds of simple, pointed questions give you a picture of what it was like. It might not be the intricacies, but it’s a sample.

Heather: Yes, and I think the questions weren’t really about the plane. They were about what a job like that would have looked like. I got most of the details about the plane from non-fiction books and technical manuals. From my grandpa, I just got a conversation about his life.

Dina: That sounds awesome. Did he enjoy talking about it with you?

Heather: I think so. I did! His last room had a painting of the plane up on the wall. He was proud of it–and being proud of something in one’s life is important, I guess, at any age.

Dina: The Lightning Field has been a book club pick. How does that feel? Was it some Oprah-level action?

Heather: Oh man. Oprah! With hand-printed letter-pressed covers. I can’t even imagine. No, I’ve spoken with a few book clubs about the book. It’s a very strange experience for both writers and readers to meet like that to talk about a book. Because the book isn’t actually in either the reader or the writer. It’s sort of in-between them. So how do you talk about something that exists in all of these different ways for different people?

Dina: OK. So, not Oprah-level. Any rock star-like moments/experiences as a first-timer?

Heather: Some of my favourite moments have been at readings with other writers that I might not have gotten to know or speak with otherwise. I read at the IFOA in Toronto, and Nancy Huston was in the greenroom with me, and I said “Do you get nervous before these sorts of things?” And she said “No, not any more. Is this your first book?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Oh, god. Yes. I was nervous then. And they put you last? They should know better than to put a first-time writer last. It’s nerve-wracking the first time.” And I thought, ‘Oh wow. Okay, here is a practiced writer who has read all over the world, and won France’s most prestigious writing award leveling with me about stage fright.’ I was so grateful.

Also, my first reading from the book happened on Gabriola Island, and Shelagh Rogers interviewed me that night for CBC. She came into the cafe where it was taking place and said “I’m a bit nervous … are you?” And again, I kept thinking ‘pinch me’ this can’t be my real life. And all of these marvelously talented people are putting me at ease with their honesty and brilliance. I don’t know if that’s exactly rock star, but it was pretty incredible.

Dina: That is total rock star.

You’ve been a part of a lot of readings and events. Do you usually get nervous or is it just the big ones?

Heather: Oh … just once sec. Someone is asking about afternoon board games. Hang on one moment?

Hi again … Big readings … Yes. I get really nervous. I think this is something else that a lot of first-time writers don’t talk about, or maybe don’t experience? But I think mostly they don’t talk about this.

There’s a great essay in Jared Bland’s collection Finding The Words by Stacey May Fowles about the nerves of a first-time writer. What to say to people. How to act. How to be on stage. How to deal with both kindness and criticism. These are very different skills than sitting at your desk thinking up stories and words.

Okay … I should go play some board games.

Dina: Board games are important. Is there one you’re particularly good at?

Heather: Hmmm … I love anything that involves charades or drawing or humming or basically acting like an idiot. So Cranium? Pictionary? Balderdash? You?

Dina: I like all of those too. Also Clue, because it’s fun to solve fake murders. Apples to Apples. Oh and Trivial Pursuit. I love trivia.

Heather: It’s the best time of year for board games, when it’s snowy and rainy and wearing PJs long into the day is a socially acceptable practice. I love the holidays.

Thank you so much for this delightful conversation.

Dina: Thanks so much to you too. And I hope you win at all the board games, champ. More pajama time in 2012!

Heather: Yes! 2012: The Year of Pajamas!

Heather Jessup’s interview with Shelagh Rogers aired Monday January 16th and will replay on Saturday the 21st at 4:05 and 4:35 in Newfoundland and Labrador. Her book The Lightning Field is out there in the world and you can buy it wherever you buy books.

Though In the Field was formed while Tacon completed her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, it came to be printed and bound when she won the 2010 Metcalf-Rooke Award. The book was launched last night at the Dora Keogh Irish Pub in Toronto.

Since she lives in far away Guelph, Ontario I got on the old gchat to interview her and talk about winning contests, writing sex scenes, small towns and (fictional) relationships.

The lovely author, Claire Tacon.

me: Tell me about the Metcalf-Rooke Award?

Claire: The Metcalf-Rooke is a contest put on by Biblioasis–anyone with a manuscript can submit. The winner is selected by John Metcalf and Leon Rooke and receives a publishing contract and a cash prize sponsored by Steven Temple Books. Winners include Patricia Young and Kathleen Winter, so it’s pretty exciting to be following their footsteps that way.

me: You’ve also been shortlisted for other awards. Do you think these kinds of competitions are helpful to writers, whether veterans or newbies?

Claire: While being shortlisted can be really encouraging and add to a writer’s CV, at a certain point it can get frustrating if it doesn’t result in publication. Contest can be really helpful to emerging writers as they are usually open to anyone and are judged blind, but consistently not winning can also be discouraging. In an ideal world, there would be more points of entry for emerging writers (although with web publishing gaining more cred, this is opening up) so there would be less dependence on contests. On the other hand, contests also help to pad the subscription rates of literary journals that I care about and it can expose entrants to new and interesting work.

me: as someone who grew up in a small town i’m constantly fascinated by other ones, and somewhat horrified too. often small towns become these mythical oases from urban life, but that’s not the case here. was it difficult to create a place that didn’t have the beautiful dream of small town living, or conversely the redneck attitude, as the driving force?

Claire: good question. A lot of the world is taken from my perception of Wolfville, which might be more representative of a small university town, rather than just a small town. Growing up on a farm outside of a really small town I never saw that allure of small-town living.

Since I went to school in the city, only a few of my friends had much reference of life outside of Toronto. They’d come up for a sleepover and call it Tweedleville. It wasn’t until I got older, probably in my early twenties that I became aware of people fetishising rural and small town culture.

me: when you’re living in it you don’t see that side, because you’re experience has instilled in you certain feelings. good and bad.

Claire: Yes, exactly. I was living in Toronto then and people would start talking about these weekend outings to St. Jacobs or Creemore. The word quaint was always used.

me: and to a small town dweller the city becomes either an exciting escape, or a terrifying concrete jungle.

Claire: Exactly. to me (and I’m guessing to you) it was a huge draw–culture! sex! excitement!  It’s still surprising when I encounter friends or family that are afraid of the city. there’s this dream of small-town communities being so tight knit, but in urban communities it’s sometimes easier to meet people because you’re always confronted with people.

Going back to your original question, I found the bigger challenge was wanting to fairly represent the “townie” or more rural experience. and I felt I didn’t have to be as gentle with the academics/urbanites.

me: you manage to balance the different attitudes though. ellie’s, husband is not charmed by her small town, her high school best friend is very at home in the place he’s always lived and not into urban life and she finds herself grappling with her feelings for both areas, both parts of who she is.

Claire: Yes, I guess a lot of people come down on one side of the fence with urban/rural–it’s hard to convince people that both are great ways to live. I feel like I’ve always been lucky to have a bit of both.

me: I think there’s often a desire as writers or artists to protect rural people as though they are fragile, when in fact they’re  tough.

Claire: Yeah, I guess I wanted that toughness to come through, versus more expected ideas.

me: i think you were successful. it’s a challenge for sure.

now ok. next up. weird transition. there are also a lot of racy bits in your book.

Claire: ha!

me: i know. weird. the transition, not the racy bits.

Claire: I find people having sex to be really interesting.

me: Me too!

Claire: So it’s a good place for character reveal to me. Also, we see so much sex in our culture. in movies, ads, books, etc. that is set up to create this idea of what sex is that is so far from the reality. So I like to play with what sex between characters is really like, versus the happily-ever-after we usually get.

me: well, you don’t glamorize it.

another awkward transition. what brought in the multi-racial aspect?

Claire: two things–one was a conversation I had about how few books there are with multi-racial families where that doesn’t become the central “issue”. And two, because part of my family is multi-racial.

me: you’re right. often multi-racial families become THE multi-racial family and all their issues are focused around that and they don’t have other aspects to their lives or characters.

Claire: So Ellie is one way I can work out my feelings that way. I said this in a different interview, but I think only seeing interracial relationships as issues is problematic. Race does complicate the family dynamic in the book, but it’s not the source of the conflict.

me: it is. okay, to change gears again. you play with ideas of love, motherhood and career and your protagonist has choices to make and gets in conflicts over her feelings on family and career. do you find that women in novels are often put in predicaments where they must make these choices, whereas male characters don’t have to struggle with the juggle?

Claire: Yes, women in novels are put in these predicaments pretty regularly and male characters are, for the most part, off scot-free. I’ve been reading a lot of Richler lately and his protagonists love their families but certainly aren’t agonizing over kids vs careers.

me: more time for their careers and man-feelings.

Claire: I tried to make sure that Ellie was committed to a career no matter what, and committed to her kids no matter what. I think her big choice is really whether to focus on caring for her children or her mother. But her husband isn’t always understanding about the fact that she has as much ambition for her career as he does. I don’t think Richard’s a boor, he’s just blinded by practicality. If her career took off, he wouldn’t stop her, but he doesn’t think relocating the family to facilitate that is feasible.

me: It certainly isn’t an I don’t know how she does it story.

Claire: I got dragged to that movie and left wanting to bleach my eyes. The fact is, having kids usually takes a woman out of the workforce for a year per kid, at minimum. In many industries, it can be hard to make up that ground, especially with a young kid. Even with the most supportive partner. In my group of friends, a lot of women who are very career-driven have decided to stay home with the kids for extended stretches of time because they’ve decided it’s the best plan for their family; I only know one man who’s made the same choice. Unfortunately, the juggle is still a reality for a lot of women.

me: another thing that interested me was the dynamic between different female characters in the book. female relationships are complicated and here you’ve got mother-daughter, old friend and current girlfriend, loaded stuff. how did you decide to navigate these relationships and explore these dynamics? because sometimes women can be so awful to each other and other times there’s a real sorority feeling.

Claire: Yeah, that’s a tough one. With the mom, I wanted to see what it’s like when two people love each other but just have no connection, or at least that connection has just eroded. Beyond women vs. women, it’s expected that every woman is close with her mother, but real closeness is pretty rare.

me: and it can be difficult. life isn’t gilmore girls

Claire: So I wanted Ellie and Linda to be competing not just with Bernie’s affection but with Lynne’s. I also wanted Ellie to grow to see the softer side of Sears by the end.

me: yeah, you really played with how ellie sees her mother through the eyes of another woman.

Claire: I mean, once she’s on side, Linda’s a pretty fun person to hang out with.

me: i enjoyed linda a lot.

Claire: Yeah, I often liked her more than Ellie.

me: she made me want to have a cigarette real bad.

Claire: ooh, sorry. don’t watch mad men:)

me: too late on the mad men front. it’s the best! i even had a dream about smoking after i finished the book! Good, vivid smoking. And people using their cigarettes to gesture or point, trace images.

The lovely cover of Tacon's novel. The trees lure you into a false sense of there being no racy bits. Don't be fooled.

Claire: Probably a lot of it comes from the fact that I have a hard time with dialogue tags. So I was like, oh, poke that cigarette around more. are you a Richard Price fan?

me: i’ve only read one of his books, Lush Life.

Claire: he always makes the dialogue and tags work. i shake the books with envy.

me: and of course, he wrote many episodes of the wire, so he has lots of dialogue practice. 

thanks for talking/typing with me.

Claire: my pleasure. also–thanks for reading the damn thing and being interested.

me: you’re so welcome. you know it’s got me written all over it. small town girl, lonely world, sex, scandals.

Claire: I thought you might like the beer specials too.

A shiny Primetime Emmy Award.

With a trusty glass of wine and trustier cohorts at my side we judged the gowns and tuxes (lovely, tragic, classic), the speeches (funny, long, confusing), the intros (often unbearable) and the host (delightful). And of course, we hemmed and hawed, cheered and booed winners and losers, as though any of this is important. Well it was important enough to warrant a few hours of tipsy evaluation.

And while yes, I also tuned into the Geminis all those weeks ago (I’m not ashamed to admit that I can’t resist awards shows) I was not as well versed. I’d heard of shows, watched an episode or two, but I hadn’t obsessed over them, watched seasons in a marathon weekend. I’d only watched one entire series, a show that is sadly already cancelled and I do find time for Canadian reality shows. After my Emmy devouring, and my excitement at the coming television season, I felt guilty and strange. I read Canadian books, I watch Canadian films, listen to Canadian music, peruse Canadian fashion magazines, but television, my everyday indulgence, doesn’t seem to get that same patriotic love. The last time I obsessed over Canadian television was during the original Degrassi days. Okay, current Degrassi is no slouch either.

One of my favourite moments at the Emmys was the win for best actor in a drama series by forever coach Kyle Chandler. Chandler played coach Eric Taylor for five seasons on NBC’s Friday Night Lights. Yes. A show about high school football, set at a small town in Texas. Do I have an interest in any of these things? Nope. But the show made me care, to an emotional degree that at times, upon further reflection felt over the top. It was all consuming, engaging and surprising. The subject matter, the content became interesting because of the quality and care.

There are a lot of questions that I can’t answer: Am I a bad Canadian for consuming so much American television? Am I a bad Canadian for not tuning in to enough Canadian programming?

A shiny Gemini Award. Our homegrown television trophy.

Where are the Canadian dramas, contemporary stories, not about solving crimes or historical times or teens? How do we find Canadian programming slotted amid the American and British imports that fill our programming schedules and eventually PVRS? Are we just not in the game in the same way? What are our CanCon television options?

And then I thought why can’t we transform our favourite sport into a grainy, gorgeous, beautifully written, puck and stick filled drama that will have the masses of the Great White North cheering for the home team and crying into their Kokanees on Friday nights? Canadians love to watch hockey. Maybe they would love to watch a contemporary hockey drama with complex loveable characters and a heart-shattering theme song. Or maybe I’m just dreaming a CanCon television dream.

Project Space is a book shop, publisher, programming space, and studio.

As the possibilities inherent to digital space become increasingly infinite, the roles of physical and print spaces are being redefined. Project Space examines, challenges, and supports this redefinition process through a curated selection of publications, exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and readings.

Books! In a bookshop!

It’s easy to see how Project Space will be successful and awesome. Director Tracy Stefanucci is a dynamic and energetic fixture in Vancouver’s publishing, art and literary spheres. She’s the Executive Director of OCW Arts & Publishing Foundation, the non-profit that runs Project Space and which publishes the amazing lit-art hybrid OCW Magazine organizer of the Main Street Magazine Tour and coordinator of Canzine West. With intelligence, creativity, commitment and that old chestnut hard work Stefanucci has set out to make Project Space a special place for creators.

“Opening a curated book shop, programming space, and studio has been an ambition of mine for a long time—although, I never really saw how it could be feasible. When 221A presented OCW with the opportunity to apply for a storefront in their project at 222 E Georgia Street, my ‘one day’ idea became a lot more realistic,” says Stefanucci.

Along with OCW’s Art Director Jaz Halloran, Stefanucci created a winning proposal. The two then refined their original idea, “from mission statement and logistics, to the project’s visual identity,” and brought their concept into existence.

One wall displays the array of publications available for sale. The selection includes literary and art magazines, beautiful small press and boutique press titles and zines. My wallet fought me and won during Swarm, but this is the kind of bookshop one comes back to again and again, to see what’s fresh on the shelf.

“We’re excited to carry some of our favourite local publications—Poetry is Dead, Pyramid Power, Fillip, Publication Studio titles, as well as our very own OCW Magazine—alongside some really inspiring international work, like OWT Creative and Pogo Books‘ zines, Pie Paper, Fine Line, and books by Lay Flat and Gestalten.”

The current installation, books hanging along the window and the delightful aforementioned paper mobile dangling from the middle of the room, comes courtesy of the collective Evenings + Weekends, comprised of UBC Masters of Architecture students Raneen Nosh, Darcy Hanna and Emma Sims. According to their artist statement concerning their involvement:

A bookish installation courtesy of Evenings and Weekends.

Project Space shop acts as an exhibition space for publications, offering new ways to view the print medium at a time when it is increasingly threatened by digital publishing. Evenings +Weekends at Project Space further explores paper-based objects of nostalgia by reinvigorating overlooked but familiar artifacts with a new sense of value. In an era of disposability and multi-functional objects, Evenings + Weekends at Project Space seeks to revive curiosity in the singular object.

“Jaz and I had been looking for ideas on how to create more sculptural shelving that would present the books more as artifacts or objects of art in an exhibition than like books in a bookstore. He found what we now have on our walls at The Cheaper Show, as part of an installation by Evenings + Weekends.”

The two met up with the collective to see if they’d be interested in a collaboration with Project Space. Not only were they inspired by the concept enough to contribute their paper-based projects, but they got involved in pre-opening manual labour too.

“They joined our volunteer team, building the nesting tables, plinths, and shelving for the space; consulting on ideas for the overall design of the space; and creating two installations—one in the front window and one hung from the ceiling.”

Evenings and Weekends paper the ceiling.

The other interactive part is the programming that will fill the space with creative minds. Upcoming events include reading series Locution on September 29^th, and, along with OCW and Broken Pencil, a free zine workshop on October 1^st.

Stefanucci says, “We are looking forward to hosting a variety of programming that supports the people and disciplines involved in creating publications: artists, designers, writers, publishers and curators. We are in talks with UBC’s Creative Writing Student Association and the Dead Poet’s Society, and, we’re chatting with Cargoh, a local company that runs a curated marketplace online, about the possibility of running pop up shops featuring work by artists and designers on their site.”

Though they may solicit events they’re most certainly accepting email proposals, at info[@]projectspace.ca. “Anyone interested can just send me an email with some basic information about their idea, and from there we can figure out whether or not the event is a fit for our space,” she says.

If you go through that door you'll be inside Project Space and looking at wonderful books and such.

This small, yet versatile space is an exciting and bold addition to the Vancouver publishing and arts landscape. I for one can’t wait to get my reading/workshops/book buying on.

To see all of the available publications in the bookshop, check out the current Evenings & Weekends installations and find out how the space can work for your events, head over to Project Space at 222 E. Georgia St. from Tuesday to Saturday 12pm to 6pm. And again, to make a proposal email Project Space: info@projectspace.ca.

The Quebec City based Girard’s previous graphic novel, Bigfoot, dealt with teenage humiliations and viral Youtube videos that increase those humiliations. Reunion, with its adult protagonist who slowly veers back into his high school mode, is about status anxiety and Facebook, that monster that allows us to measure ourselves against our peers from nearly everywhere.

Though Pascal appears to have a lovely life, a quirky cartoonist with a lovely girlfriend,  the moment he receives his reunion invitation begins an odd and awkward downward spiral. Though he initially is reluctant to attend, the idea of getting in shape and showing people how fantastic he is takes over his life. He stalks the ‘hot girls’ and communicates with an old crush. Desperate to achieve respect and admiration Pascal diets and exercises with an unhealthy obsessiveness.

Once there his social fumbles roll out in painful and painfully funny panels, filled with slapstick, insults and long repressed realizations. His nervous lack of self-awareness strips him of rational thought and the ability to accurately read social cues. He sweats through the evening sober, edgy and hoping for something more, something he can’t even define. It’s a cautionary tale for those attempting to reunite with former classmates.

The week after finishing Reunion I received an invitation to my own high school reunion. On Facebook. I yelled, shuddered, recoiled. And then a day later I fought the urge to click on every photo of every former classmate. I examined my midsection, organized my desk, worried. Then I thought about those missed opportunities, how I had been so critical of my younger self, agonized over things that didn’t matter then and surely don’t matter now.  Girard has perfectly described the cycle of reunion emotions, something to be very mindful of if I do decide to attend my own reunion. Although, unlike Pascal, I won’t decline the beers on offer. There’s only so much learning one can do from a book after all.

Reunion is out now through Drawn and Quarterly. Pascal Girard‘s other books are there too.

On Monday morning I interrupted Alex Leslie’s online viewing of the previous night’s airing of the MTV Video Music Awards to conduct this interview.

The charming Alex Leslie. Photo credit: Lorraine Weir.

show details Aug 29 (4 days ago)

11:40AM

me: okay. let’s do this.

alex: ok.

LETS DO THIS.

me: thanks for doing this.

alex: for sure. oh bieber just won. i hate him. he’s crossed over to the dark side.

OK i’m focusing…. focusing…he’s a lesbian. we should discuss that.

me: we should. first off, let’s talk a little about what we’re doing. how important is gchat to your day?

alex: ok. gchat is a huge source of procrastination for me…also sometimes i can’t remember whether conversations were in person or on gchat which is hella generationally specific. or somebody should tell a sociologist or something.

me: yes. i’m sure our parents aren’t having this discussion.

alex: have you read tao lin?

me: no.

alex: he put gchat in his novella, shoplifting from american apparel. i freaked out a little bit. but/also i think it’s awesome to put that into your ‘writing’.

me: i agree. if writers want to include gchats, they should, because a lot of writers spend half their day on there. here.

alex: yeah. there’s some poetry collection that’s all Facebook status updates. i admit i balked at that and then thought it was brilliant.

me: it’s like with anything, if it’s done well, thoughtful, interesting it will be brilliant. to some people. others will balk and balk.

alex: which just means it’s thoughtful and interesting.

me: it’s great for people to have strong reactions. speaking of, you’re primarily a short fiction writer – do you find it strange that novels are often considered the prom queen of fiction and short stories are the bad kids hanging outside 7-11?

alex: Absolutely. I think it’s a shame particularly in Canada where so many writers who cross the line of prose/poetry work in short fiction. To me short stories are about compression. There’s usually more focus on language, making it do more things in a smaller space. Writers like Mark Anthony Jarman and Lisa Foad come to mind.

Pre-chat chat.

I also find that people who have a bias against short fiction haven’t read any. that last sentence made me sound like an a******. oh well.

me: it made you sound like you do read it and know what you’re talking about.

alex: right. also short stories are often more difficult to summarize because they often work with structure or atmosphere for dramatic effect, rather than plot.

I just checked Facebook. During our interview. Just keepin it real.

me: I checked it too.

alex: Dina is typing

me: and i was reading dlisted

alex: I can’t tell if this interview is revealing something about how gchat messes with conversations or whether it is really affected/irritating. Just checked Facebook again.

Dina has entered text.

me: you have a new chapbook published by Nomados, Twenty Objects for the New World. It’s a book of microfictions, which sound really adorable, but you’re not writing about kittens and puppies here. Talk a little bit about the concept.

Hooray! A book. Twenty Objects for the New World by Alex Leslie. Nomados, 2011.

alex: i went around taking photos of public signs. billboards, park signs, etc. i cropped the photos to produce new words. for example: Please Leash Your Dog became Ease Leash — The Ease Leash. So each microfiction (or prose poem? back to genre — ha) takes a part of a public sign as its title and i wrote basically through a process of association and improvisation from there. like you said, i’m a short story writer so for me this way a way to break that up and do something more procedural, i guess, more of an experiment.

Nomados makes beautiful books. kudos to meredith quartermain for the design.

many of the objects are tied to the public language they came from. The And Registry came from The Land Registry. Yeah they’re in Strathcona. EAT LOCAL. No more farmed tish! haha vancouver joke.

I should mention that i love the artist Quintan Ana Wikswo. She makes narrative with prose and photos. I was inspired by her work. I also published a narrative made of alternating photos and prose poems on Branch. the Objects are connected to those things for me.

me: I’ve read the branch narratives.

alex: i think the way to keep writing is to tie it into your dailyness as directly as possible. photos do that for me.  there is a lot to consider in a photo: shape, colour, proportion

me: and in this case it was your photo, your experience in that moment. and then you writing and transforming it later.

alex: the Objects also came out of my reading of prose poems/prose things like Stein’s Tender Buttons and Harryette Mullen’s Sperm Kit. when i write short stories i need to balance attention to language and attention to story/character, but in projects like the Objects i can let that go.

me: on the short story front you also have a collection forthcoming from Freehand, who announced a few weeks ago, that they’ve suspended acquisitions. How excited and bummed does that make you?

alex: I’m excited to work with Freehand. Nothing’s changed in my editing schedule or in terms of the promotion/distribution of my book. Freehand’s a great press. Like everyone they’re having a hard time. So I admire them for soldiering on, honouring their previous commitments, being honest and clear with me about the situation. Since they’re part of Broadview I think that gives their writers more security. Also, things are tough all over.

me: Real tough.

alex: I’m a short story writer…

me: You’re the bad kid hanging outside 7-11!

alex: I’m happy about every publication, I try to help other people out with their projects, you know? What’s happening with Freehand is a cohesive part of the picture for me. Struggle isn’t exactly anomalous. Obviously I was worried and surprised, but that faded. Yes, tough.

me: What kind of culture are you into right now? Pop, literary, etc.

alex: I read autostraddle all the time. I read HTMLGIANT. I like RnB a lot. Music-wise I like Janelle Monae but I also like singer songwriters like Matt Pond. Literary-wise…I’m into prose poetry. I just read Elizabeth Colen’s book ‘Money For Sunsets,’ which is amazing. I’m fascinated by YouTube. How it’s become this repository of people’s lives.

I love this:

me: I love me some Jay-Z.

alex: Canadian lit journals I like: Dandelion, Poetry Is Dead, The Capilano Review. I’m into queer writing and I wish there were more space for language-focused queer writing in Vancouver.

me: Do you want to be the instigator?

alex: The instigator? Hmmmmm. I want to work with others.

me: it’s good to have a team

alex: I’m glad for the writing community I have in Vancouver, which I see as feminist. I’m editing the Queer issue of Poetry is Dead because Canadian literary journals never have queer issues. But it’s done a lot in the US. So. What’s up with that? I refer you to: Pank’s queer issue, Drunken Boat’s sex/slant issue.

me: That’s a good question.

alex: and i don’t know why that is. i truly don’t.

me: it’s not as if there are no queer writers.

alex: hell yes. So, i’m hoping all the people who’ve noticed this too will send their work. yeah. i had a lesbian friend who was fiction editor of an unnamed canadian lit journal and i suggested having a queer issue and she said that she “didn’t want people to think that she was biased towards queer content” so there are layers of strategizing/ possible self-loathing/ being afraid to alienate straight editors.

me: queer content is so obvious.

alex: hahaha. maybe if she just printed the gay stuff in pink ink, you know, just to be fair.

me: okay, so since we’ve talked about queer writing and autostraddle…

alex: uh oh, is this the part where we talk about?

me: Justin Bieber!

alex: YES!

me: i scared you.

alex: gchat = also great for comic timing.

me: i actually mean: tell me all your lesbian secrets.

alex: Justin Bieber’s crossed over to the dark side. He’s become a PR maniac. Are his people going to find this interview?

me: I hope so. I would love to gchat with you and the Biebs. triple chat! I bet he has a lot to say about microfiction. and tender buttons. you wrote a thinly veiled bieber story that won last year’s Matrix Litpop contest. so you have a connection.

alex: Yes. The story is all descriptions of youtube videos.

me: do you think people are wary of writing about pop culture in a literary way?

alex: Absolutely. I don’t like to categorize people according to age, but I think this is something that is age-specific. I’m in my 20s and the internet is all-pervasive. Music i get through music videos. News I get through links posted by friends. Not entirely, but it forms a significant part of  how I get news. How many people found out about Jack Layton’s death from Facebook? I did.

me: I found out on Twitter.

alex: I’m working on a book of short stories about the internet. Or every story is set inside the internet. So much drama happens because of things that happen online. How we witness foreign wars, through YouTube videos. Is that more immediate, or more surreal?

I’m also interested in breaking down the High/Low art thing.What short stories should be about. i don’t see why I can’t write about YouTube, about Facebook, etc. That’s something I do see more in US fiction.

me: Was your experience vastly different from Nomados to Freehand?

alex: Oh definitely. I just corrected a typo. I retyped definitely.

Freehand has a long editing schedule. I sold my book to them last fall. It’s out in April. Many stages of editing, production, design, etc. They’re in Calgary so it happened over email and phone. Nomados is here. I know Meredith Quartermain, who edited my book. The process was much faster, much more personal. With a small press there’s a formal contract, there’s money that changes hands, there’s a formal schedule. It’s a work-like set up. It’s a long process. I’ve had to be patient with it. It’s hard to place one’s first book. So I’m just enjoying the process.

me: Good.

alex: So to all y’alls who haven’t sold your first book (yet) keep going! See? Solidarity.

me: Your positive advice pleases me. Now, I know you watch reality tv.

alex: i love top chef.

me: If there was a reality tv show about writers, what would that look like? Let’s break it down. is it even possible?

alex: Yes. There would be writing exercises. At the end of every episode everybody would hold hands about talk about their insecurities. And then they would transcribe each other’s experiences. And fictionalize them. Producing deep-seeded resentments.

me: Who would be the Tim Gunn-like mentor?

alex: KD Lang

me: That would be great. Her voice is very soothing. Everyone would have to read their work in a room full of judges.

alex: No. Rufus Wainwright.

me: He could be a judge.

alex: Anne-Marie Macdonald?

me: Now we need judges.

alex: Atwood.

me: She has to be the main judge.

alex: Can I mention that I love Atwood? Everybody should read her story ‘The Age of Lead’ Because I said so.

me: CBC, are you paying attention to this? We have a show here. People, listen to Alex Leslie already.

alex: Hahahaha. I think the judges should all be small children. Or teenagers. Teenagers. Brutally honest teenagers.

me: Imagine a room full of writers and teenagers. Would they be prom queens or the bad 7-11 teens?

alex: Prom. To bring in an edgy class-conflict element.

me: now, would you be a contestant on the writing reality show?

alex: No, because I’m a terrible liar. Also because I’m a solitary writer. It would make me write terrible, terrible short stories.

me: would you watch it?

alex: Yes. But I’ll watch anything.

To purchase Twenty Objects for the New World visit Nomados Press. And look for Alex Leslie’s short story collection, People Who Disappear, in spring 2012.

CBC Canada Writes: A Review

Or, This is How I Played Around on the CBC Canada Writes Website.

Here I am. I typed the right things into Google and now I’m on the Canada Writes page. First things first: there is some pastel flavour going on up in here. The red CBC logo clashes. It’s like a drop of blood on a bouquet of flowers. Five-year old me would have wanted this colour palate for my bedroom design concept. I mean, I have nothing against baby pink or mauve or teal, but somehow it gives the whole site a very Cosmo vibe.

I push my lady mag feelings aside. I scan the page, scroll over more pink text and photos of smiling writers (this makes me happy, it’s okay to not scowl in your author photo) and then my eyes tell me to pull over. A sassy photo of CanCon fashion maven Jeanne Beker beckons me from the sidebar. Then the ad transforms into some other respectable author heads. They are the Scotiabank Giller Prize judges. They are almost smiling, but not quite. I assume these are their game faces and move on.

More pink text. Some pink text that tells me there is a contest. I click on the words that tell me I could win a free iPad. Yes, I skip over the thoughtful content and head straight to where the odds are stacked against me to win what can only be described as writer’s meth: a free Apple product.

My new BFF.

Because I am poor and somewhat desperate and it seems like it will take up very little time and also I’m awake so early on a weekday morning, I enter the contest. I write a fake memoir blurb. I am now confident that I will win this elusive electronic companion. iPad 2 and I will frolic on beaches and bike around the city to a never ending Beach Boys soundtrack stopping only to sip wheaty summer ales on patios and snuggle otters. Bliss.

Okay. I’ve entered. Enough dreaming. But wait. There appear to be more contests. To the right there’s a countdown to the CBC Literary Prizes. The countdown calendar (no clock, dang it) tells me that there are 7 days to go before I can enter. That means no chance yet. I will have to continue focusing The Secret energy on the iPad 2. Moving on.

I get hungry and go get a piece of chocolate. It’s okay because it’s after 6 am.

Back on track. There is actually more stuff on here that is not about contests or iPads. You can read previous CBC Literary Prize winners to bone up for this year’s competition. You can follow them on Twitter and ‘like’ them on Facebook. There is a resources section with writing and arts organization hyperlinks that I don’t click on for fear that I will get caught in a procrastination spiral of hyperlinks. There is some writing in French. My comprehension is about 30%. I would fail if this were a test.

On the left there are brief writing tips. Truly brief, for the most part, and lovely and insightful and easy to fully digest. There is something for everyone (poetry, fiction, journalism, CBC personality advice or something) and it looks like different writers dole out new tips daily. Excellent.

There is something called The “X” Factor, and Simon Cowell is nowhere in sight. It has nothing to do with reality tv competitions, but appears to be a story in two parts, one from an editor and another from a writer. I like it. Writers and editors are demystifying writing and editing and it’s about time. The website can explain it better than I can:

Our new 16-part series, “Writers/Editors,” looks into the symbiotic relationship between writers and their editors. Twice a week for the next two months, we’ll be running essays by editors and writers on the highs – and, sometimes, the lows – of this unique coexistence.

After all this I finally decide to see what Canada Writes wants me to think it’s about. Canada Writes wants to connect, inspire, publish, and entertain writers. I’m on board. All solid ideas. The last part interests me greatly. Here’s what they have to say about it and I think it seems to be a good idea (except for the fingerless gloves part. Knit away, writer/knitters!):

Canada Writes will dispel the myth that good writers are, for the most part, a humourless lot who spend their spare time knitting fingerless gloves. We’ll be a destination for both timeless inspiration and fun diversion.

Clearly I can attest to the fun diversion. We need fewer humourless people. Entertainment is good. I concur.

There is also another pertinent section, boldface no less, on this mission statement page that confirms my original instincts were correct: First order of business: win an iPad.

Before I close the tab I decide to read through the entries of my iPad 2 competitors. Some of them are good. They are trying to take away my happiness. Oh well. Thanks, CBC Canada Writes.

Also, the main text is black, not pink. I don’t think I made that clear.