December 20, 2013

Mother Superior goes on vacation

A professor in my department went on vacation last week and sent me some photos of my first book relaxing in St. Lucia.  I got a big kick out of them!

 A photo of my first book, Mother Superior, in St. Lucia, soaking up the sun.

On the subject of my first book, it is getting a little bit of a new lease on life thanks to Bone & Bread. I’m really grateful to Jay Miller for this review of Mother Superior on the fantastic Literatured.com.

Some of my favourite phrases from this review include “morally piebald” and “the damaging innocence of adults.”  I really like the last sentence, too: “Nawaz’s emphasis on the importance of mothering raises the question of how vulnerable children truly are, as well as the adults they become.” I’ve never described the collection that way (but I find talking about my own writing, especially in a summarizing or thematic sense, very difficult), but this strikes me as very accurate. It really is more about the vulnerability of children than it is about bad or indifferent mothers. Jay, I will probably be quoting you on this for the indefinite future, if that’s okay.

Itty bitty radio studio at CBC

In other writing-related news, I was so happy to be invited in to CBC Radio to take the 5 à 6 Culture Quiz as part of the show's 2013 round-up. I’m kind of a disaster at thinking on my feet when it comes to these things (What’s your favourite boutique? Uhhh…I blanked. Most intriguing artwork you’ve seen this year? Uh, art? What’s that?!?), but I’m hoping the magic of editing will remove some of my ridiculousness on that front. The lesson learned from this is that spontaneity is not my friend (which I already knew). In spite of feeling like no amount of coffee could make my brain work properly, it was really fun to go in and do the taping in a teeny tiny little studio and meet the lovely Tanya Birkbeck and Jeanette Kelly. From what I understand, it will air on the show tomorrow. 

 Jeanette Kelly and I at CBC!

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