Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace

Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace brings to light the relationship between writers in Canada and the marketplace within which their work circulates. Through a series of conversations with both established and younger writers from across the country, Kit Dobson and Smaro Kamboureli investigate how writers perceive their relationship to the cultural economy—and what that economy means for their creative processes.

The interviews in Producing Canadian Literature focus, in particular, on how writers interact with the cultural institutions and bodies that surround them. Conversations pursue the impacts of arts funding on writers; show how agents, editors, and publishers affect writers’ works; examine the process of actually selling a book, both in Canada and abroad; and contemplate what literary awards mean to writers. Dialogues with Christian Bök, George Elliott Clarke, Daniel Heath Justice, Larissa Lai, Stephen Henighan, Roy Miki, Erín Moure, Ashok Mathur, Lee Maracle, Jane Urquhart, and Aritha van Herk testify to the broad range of experience that writers in Canada have when it comes to the conditions in which their work is produced.

Original in its desire to directly explore the specific circumstances in which writers work—and how those conditions affect their writing itself—Producing Canadian Literature will be of interest to scholars, students, aspiring writers, and readers who have followed these authors and want to know more about how their books come into being.

Introduction

Kit Dobson

Provides an overview of the publishing industry in Canada and the discusses why he the authors pursued an interview format for the book.

1

Too Bloody-Minded to Give Up: Interview with Christian Bök

Kit Dobson

Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography (1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature that won the Griffin Prize. Bök has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry. Utne Reader recently included Bök in its list of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” (Nov.–Dec. 2009).


2

The Politics of Our Work: Interview with Ashok Mathur

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Ashok Mathur is a novelist, artist, and cultural organizer whose work focuses on issues such as diasporic identity, cultural politics, and creative responses to reconciliation in regional, national, and global contexts. His first book, Loveruage (1993), was followed by the novels Once Upon an Elephant (1998) and The Short, Happy Life of Harry Kumar (2001). His most recent novel is A Little Distillery in Nowgong (2009).



3

Change the Way Canada Sees Us: Interview with Lee Maracle

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Lee Maracle is the author of a number of critically acclaimed and award-winning fictional works, including Ravensong (1993), Sojourners & Sundogs (2002), Bent Box (2000), Will’s Garden (2002), and Daughters Are Forever (2002), and co-editor of a number of anthologies. She is a member of the Sto: lo nation.


4

A Very, Very Uncertain Way to Make a Living: Interview with Jane Urquhart

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Jane Urquhart is the author of the novels The Whirlpool (1986), which received the Best Foreign Book Award in France; Changing Heaven (1990); Away (1993), winner of the Trillium Award; The Underpainter (1997), winner of the Governor General’s Award; The Stone Carvers (2001); A Map of Glass (2005); and, most recently, Sanctuary Line (2010). She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass (1987), and the books of poetry I’m Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Place (1982), False Shuffles (1982), The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan (1984), and Some Other Garden (2000). In 2005 she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

5

To Hear This Different Story: Interview with Daniel Heath Justice

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He is also the chair of the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. In addition to various essays and edited collections, Daniel is author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History (2005), a study of Cherokee literary expression, and The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles (2005–07), an Indigenous epic fantasy.


6

Crossing Borders with Our Work: Interview with Erín Moure

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Erín Moure is a Montreal poet who writes in English, but multilingually. In her recent O Resplandor (2010) and—with Oana Avasilichioaei—Expeditions of a Chimæra (2009), her poetry is hybrid, and emerges in translation and collaboration. Her essays, My Beloved Wager: Essays from a Writing Practice, appeared in 2009; Pillage Laud was reissued by BookThug in 2011, and The Unmemntioable, a poetic investigation into subjectivity, immigration, and the western borderlands of Ukraine, was published by Anansi in 2012.


7

No Reason to Fool Yourself: Interview with Aritha van Herk

Kit Dobson

Aritha van Herk is the author of No Fixed Address (1986), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione; 1990) and Restlessness (1998). Her wide-ranging critical work is collected in A Frozen Tongue (1992) and In Visible Ink (1991). Her irreverent history of Alberta, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta (2001), won the Grant MacEwan Author’s Award for Alberta Writing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a University Professor of English at the University of Calgary.



8

Literature Survives through Its Variety: Interview with Stephen Henighan

Kit Dobson

Stephen Henighan is the author of ten books, including the novels The Places Where Names Vanish (1998) and The Streets of Winter (2004), the short-story collections North of Tourism (1999) and A Grave in the Air (2007), and the essay collections When Words Deny the World (2002) and A Report on the Afterlife of Culture (2008). Henighan’s journalism appears in Geist, The Walrus, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Guelph and General Editor of the Biblioasis International Translation Series.



9

Under Conditions of Restraint: Interview with Larissa Lai

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Larissa Lai is an Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at the University of British Columbia. Her first novel, When Fox Is a Thousand (1995), was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel, Salt Fish Girl (2002), was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award, the Tiptree Award, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award. In 2009, she published a book-length collaborative long poem with Rita Wong called sybil unrest, a chapbook called Eggs in the Basement, which was shortlisted for the bp nichol Poetry Award, and her first full-length solo poetry book Automaton Biographies, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award.


10

A Book of Poetry in the Mix: Interview with George Elliott Clarke

Smaro Kamboureli and Kit Dobson

Born in African Nova Scotia (Africadia) in 1960, George Elliott Clarke is a poet, novelist, librettist, Officer of the Order of Canada, and recipient of the Order of Nova Scotia. As a scholar, he helped to initiate the study of African-Canadian literature, publishing Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (2002). His honours include the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001) and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize (2005). He has taught at Duke University, McGill University, and the University of British Columbia. His newest books are Red (2011) and Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature (2012).