12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nayomi Munaweera

Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize. It was short-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Northern California Book Prize. It won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia. The Huffington Post raved, “Munaweera’s prose is visceral and indelible, devastatingly beautiful-reminiscent of the glorious writings of Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan and Alice Walker, who also find ways to truth-tell through fiction. The New York Times Book review called the novel, “incandescent.” The book was the Target Book Club selection for January 2016. Nayomi’s second novel, What Lies Between Us was hailed as one of the most exciting literary releases of 2016 from venues ranging from Buzzfeed to Elle magazine. Her non-fiction and short fiction are also widely published. www.nayomimunaweera.com.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The first book changed everything. I'm in Sri Lanka now working on a writing and reconciliation program that I love with a writer I grew up reading, Shyam Slevadurai. This kind of thing was unthinkable before the book came out. Trips to Sri Lanka, the country of my birth before publication meant boring visits with gossiping relatives. After the book came out, I come here to do work that feeds both my soul and those of young people wanting to be writers etc. That's just the most obvious answer at this moment.

My second novel What Lies Between Us came out in Feb of this year. Whereas my first, Island of a Thousand Mirrors was the story of a country coming into being, this book is a deeply psychological look at one character- a woman who has committed a terrible crime. Comparing books is like comparing children so I can't tell you one is better. And yet- from the feedback I'm getting from readers- the second is defter and more confident.

The second book felt different in that I had a much better sense of what I was doing. I'm self taught-I dropped out of a PhD program in English to write the first book and really had to stumble through teaching myself how to do it. With the second, I had a much better sense of how to work.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I don't think I had a choice. I had to write the books that came to me and swept me along with a sort of undeniable force.  I've written some short non-fiction but it's never had as much of a pull. Poetry has never called, although my writing has been called poetic so maybe the distinctions are not really necessary.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Each book is different. My first was started in 2001 and finished in 2009, published in 2012. As I said, I was really stumbling through the dark teaching myself what to do. I didn't even know I was writing a novel for a long time. The second came quicker because I had a much better sense how to do it, how to manage the usual cycle of self loathing, depression and euphoria that comes with any creative endevor and which is the reason most beginners give up. I'm working on my third now and it's coming much faster. I start with a big messy, ugly, pile of crap and then I shape it over and over and over and over until it is as close to perfection as I can humanly get it- this is never as good as what I dreamed of.

4 - Where does a work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Book- from the beginning.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think most writers are introverts. I am too. There is such a difference between the deep solitary mental work of writing- there has to be a sort of monastic withdrawal into the inner world to produce work. The other part of the job is to emerge from that world and share your work with the world-give a damn good reading. I try to do that- I think it's important that a writer reads their own work extremely well. If you sound bored by your writing- why wouldn't the audience be? It's an insult to them and to you. A writing teacher told me this early on and I took it to heart. So despite being an introvert I love sharing my work- I'm much better at this-talking to huge groups than small talk at parties- something that seems contradictory but I think many writers feel this way.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Yes of course, I think every writer has concerns. I think my overwhelming question is-what does it mean to live in the world with a female body? What are threats implied, how does one survive? I addressed this in the first book by placing the female body in the context of civil war. In the second book I explore the consequences of childhood trauma and its implications on maternity. I can't talk about the third because I'm still working on it-I will say it's a deep delve into extreme misogeny.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Do your work, support other writers, speak up against injustice if that feels necessary to you.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My husband is my first reader. I show it to very few other people besides him and always after him. He know exactly how to pick up the threads that I've dropped. My editorial team at St Martin's gets it after and they have been invaluable too. But no one sees the manuscript until it is as perfect as I can get it. I think a lot of projects die because writers show their work too early and get conflicting advice.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Stay humble, do the work. When the audience is clapping- look at their feet. From a renowned human rights activist in Sri Lanka.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
It depends on where I am in the book. If in the midst of writing- I try to keep a 6-8 hour day- starting in the morning. I try to do this- of course many things will happen in that day to put me off track but I do strive for this. I never write at night. I write on a laotop, not longhand, drink coffee not tea.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The beauty of working on a novel is that if one part doesn't work- you can always find a different part to work on. That's what I do- I skip around. If that doesn't work I return to the first and deepest love- reading.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Jasmine, the sea, the incense that burns in temples. But in America- these are never exact replicas of the scents of Sri Lanka.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Nature is inescapable no? It's the original influence.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Nabakov, Rushdie, Atwood, Roy. Lionel Shriver, Shyam Selvadurai, Michael Ondatjee.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a third novel!

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Gosh! I don't think I have any other real skills. I would have wanted to keep spending my life reading. So very ideally I would have wanted to be a librarian in some lovely library by the sea. I'm picturing a place that might also be a lighthouse. It would be filled with books and rise high into the air- a tower. I would live there, surrounded by books and with some cats. This is a fantasy clearly. In real life- it might get old real quick.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I didn't have a choice. My first book showed up, crumbled up the life I had before and demanded I write her. It was hugely risky, it took years. It was the best thing I ever did.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I'm reading Nabokov's The Gift and it is simply astounding. I've read Lolita numerous times but nothing else of his. Recently I decided to read my way through my small neighborhood library and found this book. It's an original from the 60's. It has a lurid cover of a couple. I think  my students think I am reading a romance novel. But it's blowing me away. The depth and density of his prose- you could drown in it. I keep writing down entire sections in my journal hoping a tiny bit of the language magic will sink into my brain. I am in love with him all over again.

As for film- I'm teaching with www.writetoreconcile.com. We take youth from all the ethnicities that suffered through the 30 year civil war here and teach them creative writing skills. Last night we all watched Pan's Labyrinth, the gorgeous movie about the Spanish civil war. I've seen it before but I was crying along with the students- just an utterly incredible piece of art.

19 - What are you currently working on?
Third novel! Can't tell you anything more. :)

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Trevor Ferguson (1992)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. See the link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Trevor Ferguson (a.k.a. John Farrow) is the author of eleven novels and four produced plays. His crime novels, City of Ice and Ice Lake, under the name John Farrow, were published in major markets around the world and reissued in 2011 by HarperCollins. Booklist praised the Farrow series as the best of our time, while Die Zeit in Germany called it the best in history. River City, which covers over 450 years of Montreal history written as a crime novel, the third in the Farrow series, was released by HarperCollins in 2011 (pb 2012) to impressive critical success. His literary novels, such as Onyx John, The Kinkajou, The True Life Adventures of Sparrow Drinkwater and The Fire Line, enjoyed dazzling critical acclaim. His most recent literary novel is The River Burns (2014, pb 2015, Simon & Schuster). The Timekeeper (1995, HarperCollins) won the Hugh McLennan Prize for Literature and was produced as a feature film. One of his plays, Long, Long, Short, Long received an audience of over 22,000 in its second run, while another, Zarathustra Said Some Things, No? enjoyed a stupendous critical reception Off-Broadway. A new trilogy in his crime series (as John Farrow) is underway, having begun with The Storm Murders (May, 2015), to be followed by Seven Days Dead (May, 2016) and The Talisman Quarry (2017), all published by Minotaur/St. Martin’s in New York. He presently is writing the next Farrow novel and living in Hudson, Quebec.

He was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the winter 1992 academic term.

Q: When you began your residency, you’d already published three novels. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: The opportunity was a game-changer in both expected and unexpected ways. My fourth novel was finished, and while in residence I was able to complete the edit of that book, as I had hoped. I was also moving my fiction in a fundamentally different direction back then. The Fire Line, written in Edmonton, was a difficult project in that its diction and accouterments, momentum and content were in sharp contrast from what I had been doing. That drastic a shift always takes time and concentration, which were afforded me by the residency.

My stint in Alberta helped in other ways though. It allowed me to get my feet wet with respect to teaching and the academic environment, having never been a university student myself. That led to teaching Creative Writing on a part time basis after that up until this year. I would not have been permitted through the door at Concordia University without the U. of A. experience. Obviously, this became a huge, and as I say, unexpected, benefit, which allowed my career as a writer to continue, as well as introducing me to a secondary career which I have much enjoyed.

Also, in Edmonton, my wife and I lived in an unattached house and not an apartment for the first time in our lives. We enjoyed that aspect. Returning home, we went out and bought a house. Without the Edmonton experience, that may never have happened. So that fundamentally changed my life as well.

Q: Given the fact that you aren’t an Alberta writer, were you influenced at all by the landscape, or the writing or writers you interacted with while in Edmonton? What was your sense of the literary community?

A: I was writing a novel at the time (The Fire Line) that is set in northern B.C., and the book that was to follow (The Timekeeper) starts out in northern Alberta and extends into the Northwest Territories (called that in the book’s day). Quite possibly, being back in Alberta instigated the latter. The novel derived from my experience as a runaway in my mid-teens, so it was good to be back for a return visit and under much improved circumstances. I had, in fact, committed my life to writing during that earlier time so enjoyed noting the improvement in my fortunes (“The last time I was in this town I was starving”). So yes, my many drives across the countryside, no longer penniless and desperate, served to both adjust and deepen my appreciation of the prairies and moved my fiction back west for a time.

Tom Pow was over from Scotland then on a residency exchange, and Greg Hollingshead was overseeing the program, and we formed something of a merry band. Greg made a point of connecting me to the broader community in Edmonton, particularly, so I had many good times among other writers, both informally and at events. I recall having the whole faculty (it seemed, anyway) out to a reading and talk I gave, something that doesn’t happen too often elsewhere. Normally, only a grudging few show up. Mind you, I do recall one faculty member expressing disappointment that I was too well behaved for a writer, neither a dipsomaniac nor a philanderer, as he preferred his writers to enliven the university environment with a dash of scandal. I pointed out to him that living as an organ-grinder’s monkey loses its charm soon enough.

Q: What do you feel your time as writer-in-residence at University of Alberta allowed you to explore in your work? Was it an opportunity to hunker down and focus, or was it more of an opportunity to expand your repertoire?

A: My work was undergoing what felt like a polar shift, which it has the habit of doing every dozen years or so. So urban, contemporary, complex, sprawling family sagas were giving way to quasi-folkloric, wilderness, male-centric and violent tales of the Canadian north. This meant, on this occasion, a change in how the language was being deployed, new rhythms, a new sound, the exploration of a different diction, as well as a shift in how the stories evolved—toward tighter, more compact, more driven narratives. As a novelist, hunkering down is perpetual, that never changes, but I think the abrupt alteration to daily routines—the familiar transplanted by the fresh—was undoubtedly beneficial in aiding my headspace to welcome and adjust to the change in direction.

Q: How did you engage with students and the community during your residency? Were there any encounters that stood out?

A: One of the beauties of the residency for me had to do with the variety of work that came across the transom, and manuscripts arrived weekly, which dovetailed with the variety of the encounters. Older folks and quite young. Avid readers and writers were juxtaposed with those dipping their toes in their creative waters for the first time. I met folks in my office and off-campus, as well, whatever worked best. Quite a few family histories appeared, many interesting, although the form rarely finds a home. One gentlemen I visited was a quadriplegic, and therefore confined to his home and subject to continuous care. Writing was critical for him as an emotional lifeline. I taught students in other English classes, including a post-grad group at one point where we got into a hot discussion on the nature of plot. During a break I rapidly wrote a position paper in bullet-poem form (a new genre) that I’ve used in my own classes ever since. Another class was so early in the morning I’m really not sure that anyone could be accused of being wide awake at the outset, but we had a few laughs before we were done. I worked very extensively on a novel with one philosophy grad, no longer a student at the time, a man in his thirties, and I’m not sure that that book found the light of day, although I traced it’s progress, or its lack, for years after the residency had ended. I thought it was a good novel and regret that it was never published, to my knowledge. A student who did fulfill his considerable promise, with whom I worked on a collection of stories that would be published, was Curtis Gillespie, who, of course, became a Writer-in-Residence at the university himself one day.

12 or 20 questions: with Natalee Caple

Natalee Caple is the author of four books of fiction and poetry. She is co-editor with Michelle Berry of an anthology, The Notebooks: Interviews and New Fiction from Contemporary Writers (Doubleday Canada). Her short story collection, The Heart is its Own Reason (Insomniac), was reviewed by the New York Times. Her first novel, The Plight of the Happy People in an Ordinary World (Anansi), has been optioned for film, and her first book of poetry, A More Tender Ocean (Coach House), was nominated for a Gerald Lampert Award. Her second novel, Mackerel Sky (Thomas Allen), was published in Canada, and in the United States (St. Martin’s). Forthcoming in Fall 2010 is a book of poetry titled The Semi-conducting Dictionary: Our Strindberg, and in Spring 2011 an as-yet untitled novel about Calamity Jane. Caple is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Calgary. She lives in Calgary with her husband and their two children.

1. How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

It’s not really true that I came to poetry first, although I wrote poetry when I was an adult getting serious about writing before I wrote fiction for publication. I read a lot of poetry as a child and copied out poems I liked into notebooks. I wrote a “novel” (fourteen pages and fourteen chapters long) when I was nine. It involved a lot of people being chased by sharks. My teacher called my parents because she didn't believe I could have written it myself. I was furious. At eleven I had my mother show me how to use the word processor so I could type up a story about a monster in a lab and send it out to publishers. I didn't understand that book publishers wouldn't take a short story so I mailed it to Penguin, Random House, all the presses that published the books on my parents' shelves. I got back a lot of very nice and encouraging letters, which I promptly destroyed (to my great regret now). I don't think I even have that book of all the stories I wrote anymore, and it was quite thick. At twelve I wrote a musical about a slow girl who wants to commit suicide after her dog dies. It's terribly funny to think about now -- I so wish I still had those early texts, but they became unbearable to me before I understood that one day I would want them.

At any rate I have always written in several genres but I didn’t take writing seriously – it was something I did to entertain myself and to keep myself company. I was very much a loner and a bookworm. When I did get serious about writing it is certainly true that I came to poetry first. That happened because I took a poetry course at York with Chris Dewdney as part of my BA. I was involved with the man who became my first husband and he saw himself as a writer and I was five years younger than him and wanted to have something to talk about with him and it looked like an easy course. I certainly knew that I could write twenty pages in an eight-month period. I saw myself then as maybe a visual artist or involved in film somehow – I had trouble picturing myself in the future. I was taking a screenwriting course and I remember I used to try to imagine a film being made and where in the room I would be. Would I be in front of the camera, acting, behind the camera, directing – where could I see myself? I was always standing off in the corner, by the donuts, just watching everything and being enthralled.

But when I started writing poetry this time, something caught fire in me and writing quickly became so important I had to keep it a secret. At that time I wrote pretending that I was trying to help my boyfriend/then-husband/now ex-husband and I was, but I was also gathering experience for myself. I remember his mother saying on the phone that I should send out his work and me thinking about my own work. It took a long time for me to get up the nerve to be myself.

2 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

To be completely honest I am not a very good public person. I love people and I struggle with the paradox of that love and severe social anxiety. I used to have about ten minutes when I was giving a reading before my hands began to shake so I made sure I read quickly and I practiced for a week beforehand so that when I started to blush and shake I would be almost done. At some point I did get used to public appearances enough that now I don’t blush and shake. And then I really enjoyed going to parties and going out with writers and talking about writing and giving readings and meeting people. But then I developed stalkers, some more innocent than others. This, I have learned, is very, very common for women in the media (even when their presence is minimal). So I slid backwards and found it almost unbearable to be in public. I remember when I was promoting Mackerel Sky I would get back to my hotel room – feeling lonely – and someone would have left a very personal message on the phone saying how much we were alike, how much we had in common. These were (I think) the innocent contacts. And I would think, really? Are you in your pajamas eating really expensive peanuts watching Anchorman for the third time? I had friends at those festivals and I didn’t feel like I could join them. But, anyway, I lost all sense of where I began and ended and nothing about me seemed okay and I didn’t know what I wanted out of writing and I needed to retreat and find a private life that felt healthy and good. So when I moved to Calgary to be the writer-in-residence, in some ways I was looking to withdraw from the writing life which had become somewhat poisonous for me.

Then I got a puppy and I met my husband and had my children and I felt safe and I was happy again. I can’t write when I am unhappy. Long story short I am enjoying writing again – it feels fun and it is going extremely well. My life feels healthy and my writing is once again a part of my happy everyday life and I am producing poetry, fiction, and for the first time a dramatic adaptation of someone else’s work. I think or I hope that when the next three books (the ones that are in the pipeline now) come out I will really enjoy readings.

3 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

The biggest question I struggle with is how to be a feminist writer now.

4 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Well, I think I am easier to work with now than I was in the beginning. But I think all my editors have been invaluable in the development of my books. I enjoy editing now and I didn’t in the beginning. I think someone would tell me something was wrong and I would get defensive because I didn’t know how to fix it. Now, the editing process is a joy, a renewal of the work for me. I am always excited to hear someone else’s take on my work.

5 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Ken Wiwa once told me that when he was struggling to write his book about his father (Nigerian playwright and activist against Shell and chief of the Ogoni people) that Alberto Manguel told him that for a writer the writing of the book is the book – it is important to experience the writing of the book and not to try to overcome it. For Ken this was particularly difficult because the book chronicles his relationship with his activist/public hero father and his unsuccessful bid to save him from execution. A major project has the benefit of being with you over a long period of time and can reflect changes in your own attitudes/style/affections. The drawback of major projects (books) is the anxiety you feel about their completion. The desire to know your work will come to something. That’s why I like shifting gears and writing a short story or a poem to feel something get finished when I am still working over the long term on something else. Poems and stories get rewritten and crafted into larger projects but there is a sense of relief about their initial limits. Letting go of the book in some ways always means letting go of a period in your life and the anchors you used then (I remember many times feeling in a tough spot and asking myself what my ballsy counterfeiter character Martine would do or say if it were her instead of me dealing with my life and there were times when she did comfort me greatly). But it is important to remember that what the reader sees as the book is only part of, the end product of, your book, which is actually more like a journey than a destination; more like a map than a place.

6 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

It is extremely easy for me to move between genres because it that is my most natural mode of writing. I usually have several projects on the go and when I get stuck with one I move over to another until I get unstuck. It’s how I relax to let new ideas in and it’s how I prevent myself from stopping. Also, I find working across genres to be a valuable way of checking that I am doing enough with each work. Poetry, for example, reminds me to think about the interaction of form with content and fiction reminds me to make sure I have content.

7 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I write all the time now. I write while I watch television. I’m not a very good television watcher though and I can really annoy my husband by asking what just happened? Sometimes I start by reading something that seems related in some way, sometimes I start by watching a movie in the genre I am working in or that contains an actor I used to model a character. I try to think of different stimuli that will work for the individual project. So, for the i-ROBOT adaptation (the play based on Jason Christie’s I-ROBOT) when I started to think about how to write dialogue for robots I looked up some chatbots on the Internet and had conversations with them about poetry. The first chatbot was a teenage girl and she wasn’t much help. She gave really short answers or didn’t answer at all and once in a while she just freaked out. But I found some therapist bots and an ESL conversation bot and some bots that use random algorithms and they worked really well with the material. I pretended to be a robot and I just talked to them and then typed up what we said.

8. - Betty or Veronica or Archie or Reggie? Drive or fly (or sail)? Laptop or desktop?

As a kid I liked both Betty and Veronica but thought Archie was pathetic. Now I really can’t stand the women’s roles in that comic. I don’t know how to drive but I like being driven. I like to fly and I like to sail. I like to see things from different angles, from above, or away from shore. I use a laptop now. I had to make some decisions about space when I moved into a condo in Toronto and didn’t have any office space or a room of my own (my partner then had the office and it was not a good idea for us to share) so I bought my first laptop. It was a hard adjustment for quite a while but now I really like the portability – it allows me to write wherever I am in the small gaps in my day. That is what I am doing now, writing this while the actors (for the i-ROBOT play) review their homework.

9. - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I draw from film and theatre a lot. I wrote one short story that was influenced by a series of photographs by a wonderful pinhole photographer, Dianne Bos. As I said, I talk to chatbots. Books come when they come from wherever – you have to be open regarding material. However, writing often enables you to think in a way that lends itself to writing more – to see narrative, characters, dialogue, lineation all around you. So writing comes from writing.

10. - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I haven’t written a screenplay. I am enjoying working on a play for the first time. I’d like to try some creative non-fiction but I would have to really get a handle on how I could do it in a way that felt new to me and it would have to be a subject I was passionate about. The other problem is that I wouldn’t like to write about myself – but maybe about my family, or Wales????

11. - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’m pretty sure I’d be too sad to work. It seems most likely that I would become a professor or some other sort of teacher since that is the other thing I am doing now (I’m in the last leg of my PhD in English). I do enjoy teaching very much. But I don’t think I would enjoy any of the other things I do now if I wasn’t also writing. It seems inevitable to me now that I would be a writer. Annie Lennox once said that if she didn’t have music she thinks she would be a very violent person. When I am writing I am negotiating myself, moving different parts of myself into the world. My writing is where I put things that I would never bring into my real life. It is where I put my anger, my hurt and fear, the things I believe in and the things I don’t; and then I make something that won’t hurt anyone but will make them think and feel. I make something that can represent my thinking, feeling self and can engage with a community or communities (even if I construct those communities only in my mind/work).

12 or 20 questions (second series);