Friday, October 14th, 2011
What an honour to find Pathologies on Charlotte Gill’s recommended reading list at Canadian Bookshelf. She calls it a “literary antidote” to the lately much-abused memoir. Can’t help but like that!
Charlotte’s most recent book is Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe, which was recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize.
Friday, July 15th, 2011
From an interview with David Shields at TriQuarterly Online:
TQO: What advice do you have for new writers?
DS: Don’t be afraid of how you actually think, and write how you actually think. If you have a chance to be an interesting writer, then you will try to find a form that releases your best intelligence. Don’t just add more driftwood to this already established pile of wood. You can write another memoir, and of course your memoir will have its own stamp because yours will be set in Omaha instead of Lincoln. You’ll have your own story to tell. But it’s really just one more relatively formulaic work that’s not advancing the art. If you have a chance to produce interesting work, it will be the direct result of your willingness to face the unusual nature of your own intelligence. Find a form that embodies that.
Saturday, July 9th, 2011
But You Have No Idea.
A Reading and Discussion with Sarah Leavitt at Novel Idea Books, Kingston
Wednesday, July 20, 6 pm
FREE.
Most readers will confess to mining the details of their favourite novels for evidence of the writer’s life. Switch out one gender for another, add ten years and relocate a character to another province or territory and we’re all but certain that the writer is talking about his or her first love, a parent, an old boss, maybe a child.
What, though, of the non-fiction writer and the memoirist? What of the people we’ve come to know only through a very focused view of their world? Do we take for granted that we know something about them? Do we as readers in a sense fictionalize non-fiction writers, creating heroes and, in some cases, villains? What do we really know of the non-fiction writer?
Please join Sarah and me as we read from our respective works and chat candidly about the figure of the nonfiction writer.
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
It’s almost time for the Prince Edward County Authors Festival. This year, the Festival features creative nonfiction in a number of forms, and will host readings and discussions with Charles Foran, Merilyn Simonds, Iain Reid, Wayne Grady, Joel Yanofsky, and Noah Richler, among others. The PEC Authors’ Festival offers an exceptionally intimate setting; the warm and welcoming staff of volunteers keeps everything running smoothly, and David Sweet’s inimitable introductions are worth the price of admission in themselves!
The PEC Authors Festival runs from May 11 to 14 this year. Check it out! Can’t promise that the lilacs will be blooming, with the spring we’ve had, but there are still a few weeks to go.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
….winner of the Edna Award for Creative Nonfiction from The New Quarterly. I was the judge. The award was presented last night in Toronto. I guarantee that Heather’s piece, “The Mr. Shredder Man,” will make you laugh even as it shreds your heart. It’s wry, wise, and beautifully wrought. You can find it in The New Quarterly Xtra.
My task was to pick just one winner from a selection of thirteen of the best nonfiction pieces published in the previous year. I had a hard time narrowing the field. So congratulations also to The New Quarterly’s many wonderful nonfiction contributors, and to editor Kim Jernigan, for consistently publishing such interesting work.
