Côte Saint-Luc Reads 2014

I'm really thrilled that Bone & Bread has been chosen as this year's Côte Saint-Luc Reads pick! The Côte Saint-Luc library book club has already read and discussed it, and I get to stop by and meet some readers and librarians later this week. (Thursday, October 23rd, if you'd like to come.) I hear that there will be music...and food! I'm really excited, actually. Nervous, but maybe even more excited than nervous! This might even be a first for me. 

The event is part of Canadian Library Month....and Quebec Public Libraries Week. I wish I'd known earlier that October was Library Month. I love libraries!

Isn't it a lovely poster? It makes me a little shy to see how much of it is taken up with my photo. But I'm going to try to rise to the occasion by wearing a fancy purple dress I bought in Kensington in London... 

Why Natalee Caple teaches brand-new CanLit (and why you should, too!)

In case you missed it, novelist and English professor Natalee Caple contributed a brilliant guest post to the QWF Writes blog called "Why I teach Brand-New CanLit." 

I urge you to read the original post, but I am going to quote at length from it here about her excellent reasons for teaching new Canadian books, even when it makes her job as a professor (in terms of constantly redesigning her syllabi and lecture notes, etc.) harder:

• The books are never out of print.
• Pre-ordering books helps to let the publisher and the bookstore know that the titles are desired.
• The material is often quite relevant to students’ daily lives. This allows students to identify better with the settings, characters and scenarios.
• Authors are accessible, alive and often available to Skype into the classroom so that students can ask them questions directly.
• Student presentations are much better. Instead of Googling a biography and retyping a handful of academic quotes they have to read the whole book (they do complain about this).
• Student essays are much better. Their close reading skills really improve because that is all they have to rely on.
• Student confidence in their own readings improves. Because they don’t have to compete with the scholarly opinions of experts they learn that it is okay to rely on and develop faith in their own readings. This causes them to engage more deeply and so…
• Students get better marks. When they see this they start to appreciate the work they did.
• Students become more willing to take risks in thinking.
• Plagiarism is greatly reduced. In fact, because a brand new book is so unlikely to have essays on it in circulation, to plagiarize really means paying someone to create an essay. Far fewer students are willing to take this extra step as it requires more planning and seems somehow more actively dishonest.
• Canadian culture is reinforced as real and ongoing, lively, diverse and present.
• Book sales show up in a timely fashion for authors. Titles get circulating at a time when it is most beneficial. We all know that numbers have become incredibly important to the sale of future books and that there is some self-fulfilling prophesy there.
• I get to stay engaged with my peers in the writing community. I am giving them my support and staying on top of my field.
• I get to read all the books I wanted to anyway and call it work! Did I say that it is my dream job?

Isn't this amazing? I can say that as an aspiring writer in university, it was completely life-changing (and ambition-fueling) to read contemporary Canadian Literature in the classroom. One professor assigned Strange Heaven as an extra-credit assignment in an Atlantic Fiction course and mentioned how Lynn Coady had been a student in his classroom not that many years earlier. (And I felt affirmed, somehow, to hear that she was quiet in class, like me.) I can only imagine how much more galvanized I would have been if I had had the opportunity to meet or Skype in class with one of the writers whose work I had read and studied. 

I also strongly agree that close reading develops crucial critical faculties. Education shouldn't be all about research and organizational skills, important as those are. When students begin grappling with texts on their own and developing their own arguments, learning becomes more profound and, I think, more rewarding. But Natalee has already covered all this more succinctly in her original post....

...so I'll just add that as a published writer, it has truly been a privilege to be invited into several classrooms where students have read and studied my work. The experience has been incredibly positive -- and instructive, too. Students actively engaged in trying to make sense of a text will ask very incisive questions. And of course it is intensely rewarding to know that students are reading and engaging with your work at that level. I might even go so far as to say there is almost nothing MORE rewarding for me as a writer. This is the kind of knowledge that gets you through the occasional long bad days of struggling to finish the next story or novel, slogging away at the day job unjamming another photocopier, or thinking about people with business degrees who make eight zillion times more money, etc.

So all of you wonderful, lovely, gorgeous Canadian Literature professors out there: please consider teaching brand-new CanLit!

Wolfe Island LitFest

All year, as I’ve been going around from literary festival to literary festival, there has been a quiet but persistent legend growing in my mind of the Wolfe Island LitFest.

“Have you heard of Wolfe Island?”

“Have you been to Wolfe Island?”

“If you get invited, GO!”

And then I was invited. So I went!!!

The 11th Annual Wolfe Island Joe Burke Literary Festival

You can see from the poster that this happened in June. But that was a mere blink of the eye ago in blogging time...

Rumour has it that Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip (!!!) is sometimes in attendance. Joseph Boyden is usually there, and this year his absence was lamented by many (including me). I was told by a few people that the first public readings of sections of The Orenda and Through Black Spruce happened on Wolfe Island. (I don't know if this is true, but it was a fact related with a significant amount of pride.)

The mystique of Wolfe Island was such that right up until a few days before I left, I wasn't 100% sure how I was getting there or where I might be staying. It was the kind of uncertainty that otherwise might have made me nervous (I like to plan! I like to visualize!), but I also knew that I shouldn't worry...I knew it was all going to come together.

I was charged with connecting with visiting Irish writer Kevin Barry upon leaving the train and to take a taxi to the dock, where we would be met by someone in a boat. Somehow, without ever having met before, Kevin and I spotted each other immediately, and along with his wife Olivia, easily found a cab.

The taxi drove along Tragically Hip Way, which caught the attention of the Irish, and as a long-time Hip fan, I had the fun task of trying to explain how awesome they are and the place they occupy in the national consciousness.

We were found by the lovely people who needed to find us (including the inimitable Mark Mattson, whose family plays a role in this wonderful festival), and we crossed very choppy waters on a little speedboat. Not knowing exactly what to expect -- or rather, having ignored some of the concrete information I did have at hand -- I was wearing heels, which made the boat boarding process slightly more nerve-wracking than it ought to have been. City girl mistake!

On a boat!

Then we crossed to the island, which was beautiful. We were fed, welcomed, introduced to a whole host of lovely Wolfe Islanders, taken to a remarkable abode known as the Duck Club, and then, later, to the venue. 

Beautiful peonies on the lunch table

 
The reading venue was a beautiful spot. The festival is supported by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, an charitable environmental group that works to protect the lake and keep it safe for drinking, fishing, and swimming.

Gorgeous light at the venue

 

Listeners gathering

Posters from previous years

Steven Heighton introducing Ken Babstock

Ken Babstock reading

Kevin Barry's (hilarious) reading

The photos are lacklustre and incomplete, I know. But all of the readers were amazing, those pictured as well as those not. Mostly, I was too much in the moment to worry about documenting things. Tanis Rideout read a poem about Wolfe Island which was full of references to past festivals and which was somehow moving and funny even without access to the full knowledge to understand all the allusions.

My own reading started with an introduction from Dave Bidini (!!!) and some microphone trouble, and I really enjoyed the reading itself. There were actual, palpable good vibes. At one point, I was startled to look up and notice Sarah Harmer in the audience. I got super into the band Weeping Tile after they broke up (sadly!), but Sarah Harmer’s solo album You Were Here was a major theme with me and my friends during my undergrad. (Listen to this as a sample if you don't already know it...then buy it.) I was lucky enough to see her play at least half a dozen times over those years. I was so thrilled she was there and even more thrilled when she came up to speak to me afterwards!

After the readings, everyone ate, drank, and made merry. A lot of us watched part of the World Cup game between England and Italy in a nearby garage while an eclectic soundtrack, (including "Poets" by the Tragically Hip, achieving a quintessential interdisciplinary artistic CanLit moment for me!) blared at full blast. 

Merry-making evidence

Dreamy drive through a wind farm

Bundled up outside the Duck Club before a night out

Then that night Dave Bidini and his band played at a beautiful patio venue on the water, where sadly my phone was too dead to take any good photos. Although I did work up the nerve to ask Sarah Harmer for a photo that Kevin Barry was kind enough to take and send to me. She is so gracious and lovely!

Me and Sarah Harmer!

I don’t want to unravel any more of the Wolfe Island mystique, so I won't get into the antics that played out after dark (most of which, due to exhaustion, I didn't even witness).  Maybe you really don't want to know what the poets are doing... Let's just say that there are good reasons to keep guns under lock and key....