Archive for the ‘Creative Nonfiction’ Category
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
I’m proud to say that an essay of mine, “Library Haunting” has placed in The New Quarterly’s first essay contest, named in honour of Edna Staebler. You can find it in the latest issue, along with first place winner Theresa Kishkan’s magnificent piece. It’s called “Arbutus menziesii: The make-up secrets of the Byzantine Madonnas,” and if that doesn’t pique your interest, you’re crazy. Her essay is beautiful, thoughtful, surprising, and deep—everything an essay ought to be. You’ll also find a fresh, funny, and honest piece on early motherhood by Kerry Clare, whose reviews and interviews with authors I’ve been following with interest for some time. It’s an honour to appear here with both of them.
The entire issue is packed with great stuff, including prize-winning poems by Jeanette Lynes, Patricia Young, and Kerry Ryan, fiction by Isabel Huggan, Holley Rubinsky, and Jessica Westhead, a reminiscence by the wonderful Sarah Selecky, an introduction to A.J. Somerset, winner of this year’s Metcalf Rooke award, and a series of amazing portraits of writers by Alan Drayton.
I was fortunate enough to win the inaugural Edna Staebler prize from TNQ in 2008. Then, it was not a contest; instead, judges chose from a selection of nonfiction published in the journal during the previous year. So the prize came as a total shock.
It was just before Christmas, a Friday evening, and I was sitting down to supper with my family, when the doorbell rang. With some irritation (imagining it was somebody soliciting for something or other) I went to answer. The mailman handed me a package. I looked at the return address and wondered why in heaven’s name Kim Jernigan would be sending me something at this time of year. I was pretty sure I had already received my issue of the magazine, and besides, this was heavier.
I opened it up to find two cookbooks by Edna Staebler. Two cookbooks that my mother’s friends had used back in the 80s. What the heck?
And then I found the envelope. In it, the most generous letter imaginable from Kim, generous words from that year’s judge, Elizabeth Ruth, and an even more generous cheque.
What better Christmas gift, for a writer?
Thank you, again, New Quarterly, for the continuously evolving gift of new and exciting writing.
Tags: Awards, Essays, Journals, The New Quarterly
Posted in Awards, Blogs, Creative Nonfiction, Essays | 2 Comments »
Sunday, July 18th, 2010
“Often when I read examples of what purport to be lyric essays, I …find them resembling a certain kind of experimental poetry that has proliferated for at least forty years…There tends to be a reliance on structural, conceptual devices, such as lists or repeating word-phrases, a welcoming of stream-of-conscious, surrealist disjunctive leaps from line to line, and a suppression of mounting argument, replaced by circularity or trance… “
—Phillip Lopate
Tags: Essayists, Essays
Posted in Creative Nonfiction, Essayists, Essays, Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Essay | No Comments »
Monday, July 5th, 2010
Lyric Essay
Words that go with the lyric essay include fragments, collage, mosaic, white space, juxtaposition, braided narratives, heightened attention to language.
Deborah Tall and John D’Agata:
The lyric essay doesn’t expound, is suggestive rather than exhaustive, depends on gaps, may merely mention. It might move by association, leaping from one path of thought to another by way of imagery or connotation, advancing by juxtaposition or sidewinding poetic logic. It often accretes by fragments, taking shape mosaically, its import visible only when one stands back and sees it whole.
Tags: Essayists, Essays
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
I’m writing from Banff, where I’ve just attended the Creative Nonfiction Collective’s annual conference—two days of readings, panels, workshops and conversations devoted to this exciting, capacious genre. Some of my personal highlights included: Betsy Warland’s hypnotic essay about the writing life (you can find it on her website); Erna Paris’s warm, sparkling, and beautifully modulated keynote speech, which exemplified literary nonfiction’s multiple and overlapping pleasures; meal-time conversations with old friends and new acquaintances; and, of course, the annual Readers’ Choice Awards—and not only because this year, I was the fortunate winner!
What I loved about this event was its generosity. Members of the group are invited to nominate a piece of literary nonfiction published within the last two years. They send a short excerpt of the writing to the President, David Leach, and at the conference they read the excerpt aloud to the assembled participants. (The President reads if the nominator is unable to attend). Conference-goers then cast secret ballots to choose the winner.
The nominated work does not have to come from a book, which means that it’s possible to bring attention to newer or less well-known writers through the nominations process. And for me, Lynne Bowen’s reading of Kaitlin Fontana, and Myrna Kostash’s reading of Eufemia Fantetti were among the most vivid and powerful of the evening. What a gift to hear these voices in such a setting! And a gift to those nominated, too. I know I felt honoured to be included in such wonderful company. Also, the readings inevitably illustrate the full range of the genre, which includes everything from narrative or fact-based reportage to memoir to the fragmented, mosaic-style lyric essay.
A nominator’s passion for his or her nominee is infectious. I won’t soon forget Jerry Haigh’s rendition of a rousing and hilarious selection from Paul Nicklen’s Polar Obsession, or Fiona Tinwei Lam’s moving introduction to the work of Sharron Proulx-Turner.
My nomination this year went to Shawna Lemay’s Calm Things. I have reviewed the book on this blog, and I’ve also interviewed Shawna. It felt so good to introduce a book that I’ve admired to readers who would appreciate it when they found it. True to my expectations, when I mentioned the book’s title, publisher, and author, many grabbed pen and paper to write them down. They care. They’re interested. They want to find new work and learn from it. It’s this spirit of generous curiosity that for me, characterized the conference as a whole.
Thanks to the organizers for inviting me, and thanks to all participants for making it such a great experience!
Tags: Conferences and Symposia, Creative Nonfiction Collective
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Monday, March 29th, 2010
Last year, I had the privilege of reading with Eric Siblin at the Prince Edward County Authors’ Festival. A few months later I found myself on a Quebec Writers’ Federation jury; his book, The Cello Suites, was nominated for the McAuslan First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction – and won both. It was also shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award, the BC Award for Canadian Nonfiction, and a Writers’ Trust Prize. Not bad for an inaugural effort.
In The Cello Suites, Eric sets out to solve the simple riddle of a missing manuscript. Instead, he finds himself pondering the deeper enigma of how a piece of music penned by a royalist, conservative composer could, in the twentieth century, become the signature and rallying cry of a liberal, humanist musician, and how that same piece of music could continue to speak so powerfully to musicians and music-lovers of so many persuasions today. Part biography, part music history and part music appreciation, The Cello Suites is an ambitious, carefully researched, and inventively constructed book written with clarity and verve.
Photo: Marcie Richstone
Q: The structure of The Cello Suites, with three interwoven narratives broken into sections much like movements in music, echoes the Suites themselves. I loved this device; it added texture and tension to each story. How did you come up with the idea to compose the book this way?
A: Thanks, Susan. The idea to structure the book according to the music came to me early on. On a superficial level I just liked the sound of putting musical titles like sarabande, courante, and gigue on the page. But I very much wanted the book to mirror the music so it seemed like an obvious thing to do. The idea of the book quickly became a sort of mosaic encompassing suites one through six with each suite broken down into those six lyrical movements. Each suite had a persona of its own in musical terms and each suite (or so I imagined) seemed to link up in a greater narrative whole. I also benefited from the structure because the music itself provided narrative signposts for a writer searching for a storyline.
Q: In writing this book you conducted research of every conceivable type. You travelled, interviewed people both face-to-face and by email, searched the archives, studied scores. You immersed yourself in the Bach community and learned to play the cello (at least a little). Did you know what you were in for when you began the project? What research tips can you offer other writers of creative nonfiction?
A: I had no idea what I was in for at the start. I began in a pretty naïve and idealistic way and mostly just followed by nose trying to piece together the story. In retrospect I was lucky – it added up to a story. But if we make our own luck as nonfiction writers it is with the heavy lifting of research. I think that by researching as much as possible you open up avenues that give your writing maximum flexibility and mobility, allowing you to pick and choose the most promising raw materials, map out trajectories and get around dead ends.
I would urge first-time nonfiction authors to pick up the phone, call experts and pick their brains. I should have done more of this at the outset – next time I will be less shy. The Internet is of course a fabulous tool, but I wouldn’t abandon the library. Many discoveries take place in the stacks.
Q: There’s a real warmth in your approach to Bach and Casals; I got the impression that you came to care about both men, and you’d be sorry to leave them. It made me sorry to leave them, too. Thoughts?
© Perren Barberini, Zermatt
A: I think I became attached more to the story than to the characters of Bach or Casals. I was sorry to see Bach go because he left with so many unanswered questions for future biographers. But he was born in 1685 so I couldn’t expect him to hang around forever. Casals lived to the respectable age of ninety-six. And the end of both their lives came in Suite No. 6 of the book, the last suite, the suite that has everything to do with transcendence, so it made perfect sense to say my goodbyes at that point. Besides, I wanted to get on to other projects.
Q: This is a first book. Who or what were your models or inspirations? Who are some of your favourite nonfiction writers?
A: One of the things that motivated me to write this book is that I wasn’t aware of any particular model and was under the impression, true or not, that this sort of thing hadn’t been done before in quite the same way. So the absence of models spurred me on. As for nonfiction writers, I always have time for Simon Winchester, Alex Ross, Christopher Hitchens, and A. J. Liebling.
Q: What was your biggest challenge in completing the book?
A: My biggest challenge was probably keeping the musical structure of the book intact while keeping the narrative ball moving in a good way. I shuffled the constituent parts around a bit, trying to figure out where best to place the Bach, Casals and first-person strands. For a long time I was overambitious, trying for example to make every sarabande, which is the saddest sounding dance movement of every suite, correspond with a sad part of the story. Trying to tailor the narrative to the musical structure in every respect turned out to be overly rigid and ultimately untenable. So I relaxed the structural grip, tried to let the narrative breathe more freely, and things seemed to improve.
Q: What was the biggest reward?
A: Actually getting published.
Q: What are you reading now?
A: I just finished Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a very intriguing multi-generational sequence of fictional stories centering on a family of physicians from the 17th century to the present day. And I thoroughly enjoyed a slim book by John McPhee, Levels of the Game, about a 1968 tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Now I’m on to The Anthologist, a quirky musing about poetry by Nicholson Baker.
Q: What is your next project?
A: I’m trying to write two things, fiction and nonfiction, but it’s early days.
Eric Siblin is a Montreal-based journalist and documentary filmmaker. He studied at Concordia University in Montreal, receiving an M.A. in History, before coming of age journalistically at The Glengarry News in Alexandria, Ont., and the Standard Freeholder, in Cornwall, Ont. He then worked as a reporter/editor at the Montreal bureau of The Canadian Press (CP) from 1989 to 1996 when he joined The Montreal Gazette as a staff reporter, including a stint as the newspaper’s pop music critic. He made the transition to television in 2002 with the documentary Word Slingers, which explores the curious subculture of competitive Scrabble tournaments. The film was broadcast in Canada and the U.S., and won a Jury Award at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. He also co-directed the documentaryIn Search of Sleep, and has written for a wide variety of magazines. The Cello Suites is his first book. Here is his website.
Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Interviews
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