Friday, March 25th, 2011
The Utne Reader has published my excerpted essay, “Library Haunting,” online. You can find it here.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Glaros
I confess I laughed at the subtitle. But maybe it takes a Canadian to defend a great American institution these days.
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Hardworking Melissa Krone of The New Quarterly must have thought I was the rudest writer on their rosters; she kept sending emails asking to interview me and I kept “ignoring” her. The culprit was my spam filter. But at last we connected, and she’s posted an interview we did at The Literary Type and on The New Quarterly’s website. Thanks, Melissa, for your thought-provoking questions and for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
There’s still time to enter The New Quarterly’s annual contests: details on their site.
Saturday, March 5th, 2011
I’ve just come back from a month at the Vermont Studio Center. Founded by artists in 1984, the Studio Center is now the largest international artists’ and writers’ residency in the United States. Every month, around forty painters, sculptors, photographers, and other visual artists, along with a dozen or more writers set up for work in the Center’s light-filled studios and congregate in the Red Mill for delicious meals, conversation, and guest lectures from visiting artists.
Photo courtesy Lynn Nash
One of the most fascinating and inspiring aspects of this residency, for me, was the opportunity to get to know a number of visual artists, to see them at work in their studios, and to listen to them talk about their process. On a snowshoe hike one afternoon we discussed artistic self-doubt. I had been writing an essay on the subject. Mostly, I thought of self-doubt as an obstacle or an enemy. Something to be beaten. And that is mostly the way we spoke about it. But somehow, as a result of our conversation, I began to wonder if there might be a hidden value in self-doubt. I spent the next few days exploring that idea. And the essay became a very different piece than it might have been, if not for their influence.
Photo courtesy Cheryl Suchors
Here you see me with Carolyn Enz Hack, Lynn Nash, and Winston Lee Mascarenhas.
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
I’m delighted to say that an excerpt of my essay “Library Haunting” appears in the March/April edition of The Utne Reader. It appeared originally in The New Quarterly, where it won second place in the Edna Staebler Contest for the Personal Essay last year. Which reminds me: Enter soon! Details are available on The New Quarterly’s website; the deadline is March 28th.
The editors at The Utne Reader were wonderful to work with. Brad Zellar’s sensitive and respectful incisions are hardly noticeable. It’s an honour (or should I say honor?) to appear in this publication, which prides itself on selecting the best from the alternative presses.
They also picked up a piece by Laurie Block that originally appeared in Prairie Fire. Hooray for Canada’s “little” magazines.
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
Thanks to Jill Margo and Andris Taskans for this list of women essayists. You can add names to the list.
