Six Questions interview #198 : Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the bestselling author of Wait Softly Brother (2023 Giller Longlist), All the Broken Things (Toronto Book Award shortlist, CBC Canada Reads longlist), Perfecting, The Nettle Spinner (Amazon First Novel Award shortlist, ReLit Prize shortlist), Way Up (Danuta Gleed Award). Her short fiction has been published in Granta Magazine (UK), The Walrus Magazine (CDN), The Lifted Brow (AUS), Significant Objects (USA), 7X7 LA (USA), Maclean’s magazine (CDN), and many others. She is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Toronto.

Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?

I was born in Ottawa and lived there until I was five, when my parents bought a farm property near Metcalfe, Ontario, and built the home I consider to be my childhood home. I lived there until I went to the University of Ottawa, when I moved back into the city. I left the region entirely to live in Belgium and then, later, Toronto. I married and had children and we moved for work purposes. I am now divorced and living in Prince Edward County, Ontario. I guess I am a country mouse but I like cities well enough to visit.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

I wrote my first stories as soon as I could write at age five and began to seriously think of writing as a job during my undergraduate degree at U of O, mentored in courses with the Galiano-island writer Audrey Thomas and the Saskatchewan novelist, Guy Vanderhaege, both of whom did writer-in-residence programs in the 80s there. It was Thomas who suggested I start submitting my work to journals, in part, I think, because she knew how failure would be the best editorial. I have endured a lot of rejection in my writing life and, for some reason, it entrenches my belief that I am a writer. Obviously, I have developed a complex about this, the knot of which is unlikely to ever be unwound.

I never really had much of a writing community in Ottawa though I did write for a time with the playwright, Michael O’Brien and also with the sound artist, Christof Migone, whom I’ve since collaborated with (along with the poet and children’s author, Jordan Scott) on a project call Today Calls, which I am happy to see is still running online.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since?

I’ve written collaboratively with the critical theorist, Mari Ruti, who tragically died in June of this year (2023). That book—about writing and living creatively—is on submission. But it’s rare to find someone with whom you can write together or, at least, it has been for me.

I go in and out of contact with writers and artists. I often find I work best alone troubling words until they make some sort of sense but, at other times, I find I need people around me. I used to work exclusively alone at home, swearing I could never work in a café, and then discovered, for a time, that I could only work in cafés. I was part of an online group of writers for a year or so but that hasn’t worked well for me lately. I have gone to residencies (Yaddo and the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts) where artists and writers are banned from speaking all day but come together in the evenings and talk shop and life. I have enjoyed that and found it productive. I’ve also written directly online and written some good work. I like an audience and the risk involved in that sort of exposure but, not always. I guess I find a style or approach hard to pin down. I change and my practice changes, too. It’s never one thing. I don’t think it has much to do with where I live, although, here in this little village in which I now live, there really are no local cafés and so I made a little room for myself with a comfortable chair and a place to put my tea mug. That is good enough for now.

Q: What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow?

I have been so long away from Ottawa that I don’t really know about the scene. That said, I recently did a reading with Hollay Ghadery at Perfect Books and found there a beautiful, robust, and lovingly curated shop of great literature so there must be a scene.  

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

My first stories are almost all set in and near Ottawa. There stories are from collected images and made-up things that I collaged into stories—they are autobiographical in a funky sort of way. All my work has been autobiographical to some extent but especially Wait Softly Brother, my most recent book, which is explicitly so, about my stillborn brother and the psychological result of repressing a tragedy that is so un-mournable.

Q: What are you working on now?

So many projects. A memoir in essays about coming out and becoming. A queer coming-of-age novel set in my new environment in the early 80s. And poems, believe it or not.

 

Six Questions interview #197 : Jennifer Hulshof

Jennifer Hulshof: I was born and raised in Ottawa, and never left having my whole family here. I come from a once large Irish Catholic family, my grandparents having five kids and growing up with all of my cousins like they were brothers and sisters are some of my fondest memories. BBQs and Sunday dinners at their place. Football in the living room with the men all shouting at the tiny box television. The smell of turkey throughout the house at Christmas with a loaded tree.

I graduated from high school in 1996 and had my first daughter shortly after, with my second daughter arriving not quite two years later. I attended Algonquin College and took media communications thinking I would become a freelance journalist, but quickly realized I preferred writing fiction more than reality. I’ve been writing stories since I was six years old and able to put pen to paper. Papers I’ve left scattered wherever I went much to my mother’s chagrin. 

I have always had a fascination with the paranormal, especially vampires (also to my mother’s chagrin), drawing my inspirations from authors like Anne Rice and L.J Smith, as well as, in recent years, J.R. Ward and Laurell K. Hamilton.

I wrote my first book The Council in 2014, and my second, Cloak and Dagger, in the trilogy a year. It took me two more years to write my third The Coven, with many ups and downs occurring in the publishing world. In 2019, my first book was featured at BookExpo and BookCon in New York City, and I’m currently working on number four in the series which will be titled, Heart of Darkness.

I like dogs and cats and horses, reading and of course writing. I have finally found the love of my life whose support has been outstanding through my whole process of writing and publishing and getting noticed. My hope is one day for my books to be adapted to film, and possibly made into graphic novels as well.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

A: I was born and raised in Ottawa and never moved away as my family is all here.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

A: I've been writing ever since I have been able to put pen to paper, and didn't really get involved in the writing community here in Ottawa so much as in the States when I got picked up by a very small publishing company called Authorhouse who helped me publish my first book.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

A: It's been a Rollercoaster ride of ups and downs in the writing community, a lot of struggles and being scammed once too many times has changed how I feel towards my writing. I've experienced a lot of writers block as a result trying to get my fourth book written. But at the same time my passion for it is still there and I've even toyed with the idea of an offshoot series from my second book which I love and wrote very easily. 

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

A: I’ve had the opportunity here to display some copies of my books in independent bookstores in and around the area, I had a book signing that definitely boosted sales. There is definitely a lot of opportunity to market here, however I find not a lot of publishing companies willing to take me on.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

A: I was given the opportunity to be featured (for a fee) at BookExpo and BookCon in New York City via a small publishing company called URLinkandmedia, which was an incredible experience and slightly boosted sales. Definitely gave me a different perspective of the writing industry and the struggles and challenges as an author to gain notoriety. It's also challenged me to look at the trending demands of my target audience and rethink a lot of my delivery when telling the story I want to convey.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm currently working on book four of my series The Council. Book four is called Heart of Darkness. 

I’ve always found there weren’t a lot of strong female main characters portrayed as vampires in any series I read or watched and wanted to create one of my own: Ashton Gament is a vampire born as a human slave in ancient Egypt, saved from a death sentence by a vampire who gave her the gift of eternal life….but there are rules to follow being a vampire, and they are strictly governed by the ancient original vampires known as the Council. Ashton faces off against them in the biggest battle of her very long life.