VOLUME 41 | NUMBER 2
MAGAZINE OF THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
APRIL–JUNE 2021
P. J. VERNON
WE ARE ALL VILLAINS IN SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY But someone else’s story isn’t our own
TERESA WONG
I HEAR THE IMAGE WORLD CALLING TO ME The making of a graphic memoir
ADAM POTTLE
GABRIELLE PYSKA
NOTES ON A VIVISECTION
THE WRITER, WRITING AND ADHD
Becoming a Deaf writer
Feeling like you can’t be the writer you want to be
CLEM MARTINI
PARTNERS IN WRITING NO MORE What happens when one of you…
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
ARTISTS NEED A GUARANTEED BASIC INCOME
CONTENTS
WESTWORD VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 | APRIL – JUNE 2021
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19 22 Feature Articles
8 WE ARE ALL VILLAINS IN SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY P. J. Vernon 11 I HEAR THE IMAGE WORLD CALLING TO ME Teresa Wong 14 THE WRITER, WRITING AND ADHD Gabrielle Pyska 16 NOTES ON A VIVISECTION Adam Pottle 19 SO, YOU’VE DECIDED TO START A VLOG Tyler Gajda 20 PARTNERS IN WRITING NO MORE Clem Martini 22 REQUESTING—AND RECEIVING—REVIEWS Rick Lauber
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Editor’s Note
Raymond Gariépy 3
Why Am I Telling You This?
Marcello Di Cintio 4
ED’s Note
Carol Holmes 5
Note From The Board
Carol Parchewsky 6
Write/Right: Law for Writers
Jeananne Kirwin, Q.C.
Profile 27 Meet Your Poets Laureate
29 WestWord Submission Guidelines
The Community 30 Member News 31 New WGA Members 32 Donors & Sponsors
24 KEMOSA SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS ANNOUNCED Ellen Kartz 26 RE/ORIENTATION CONFERENCE Dorothy Bentley
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts; the Edmonton Arts Council; Calgary Arts Development; The City of Calgary; the City of Edmonton; Canada Council for the Arts.
COVER PHOTOS P.J VERNON, PHOTO BY JODI O TERESA WONG, PHOTO BY KELLY MACDONALD GABRIELLE PYSKA, PHOTO BY KELSEY ENG ADAM POTTLE, PHOTO BY TENILLE CAMPBELL OF SWEETMOON PHOTOGRAPHY CLEM MARTINI, PHOTO BY COURTNEY JEWELL MARCELLO DI CINTIO, PHOTO BY JAMES MAY COVER DESIGN JASON SCHEIBELHOFER
EDITOR’S NOTE
We support and advocate for all writers and provide opportunities to grow and connect while enriching Alberta’s culture and economy. WestWord is published four times a year. ISSN: 0821-4203 © Writers’ Guild of Alberta, 2021 WGA Membership Rates $80/year; $50/seniors; $40/low income; free to post-secondary students until graduation. Membership is open to all writers resident or formerly resident in Alberta. WGA Executive President: Carol Parchewsky Vice President: Theresa Uchechi Ezeuko Treasurer: Nicolas Brown Secretary: Janet Gurtler Members at Large: Alison Clarke Dr. Kimberly Fraser Lori Hahnel Teresa Wouters Youth Committee Rep: Sophie Pinkoski Past President: Leslie Chivers WGA Staff Executive Director: Carol Holmes Program and Events Coordinator: Jason Lee Norman Program and Conference Coordinator, Southern Alberta Office: Dorothy Bentley Communications and Partnerships Coordinator: Ellen Kartz Member Services Coordinator: Mike Maguire Operations & Grants Officer: Valmai Goggin Student Intern: Sadie MacGillivray WGA Contractor WordsWorth Director: Colin Matty WGA WestWord Editor: Raymond Gariépy Assistant Editor: Ellen Kartz Layout & Design: Jason Scheibelhofer Printing: Burke Group of Companies Please notify the WGA office immediately of any address change. Writers’ Guild of Alberta Percy Page Centre, 11759 Groat Road Edmonton, AB T5M 3K6 Ph: (780) 422-8174, Fax: (780) 422-2663 Toll-free: 1-800-665-5354 Email: mail@writersguild.ca Website: writersguild.ca Southern Alberta Office: #204, 223 12th Ave. SW Calgary, AB T2R 0G9 Ph: (403) 875-8058 Email: dorothy.bentley@writersguild.ab.ca Submission queries can be sent to: editor@writersguild.ab.ca
THE WRITER’S DUTY: SEEK CHAOS AND FEAR RAYMOND GARIÉPY In British writer Olivia Sudjic’s Exposure, a long-form essay published in a book format, she contends her duty as a writer is to “seek out chaos, or the very thing of which she is most afraid.” Five of the writers featured in this issue adhere to Sudjic’s contention. They seek the chaos and their fears; struggles rising from having gone deep, not wide. P.J. Vernon writes: “Whatever creative rocket fuel my lived experiences as a gay man would’ve given my plots was no match for one enormous fear: what large publisher with international distribution would ever buy a gay thriller?” His response: “I held nothing back. I began to write a very dark, very honest, and very gay thriller.” Vernon’s determination paid off. “I sold my gay, unsellable thriller to the biggest publisher in the world.” He acknowledges he is wrong to have believed there isn’t space for him or characters like him, and “wrong for letting fear of what I don’t know and can’t control box in my creativity.” Teresa Wong had an epiphany. “I knew the story I was working on—about my first child’s birth and my subsequent struggle with postpartum depression—would be best told as a comic.” Although she had no real illustrating skills, Wong persevered, conquering her fear. “I’m glad I told the story as a graphic narrative,” she writes. The format gave her “the chance to explore and relate my experience with new motherhood in a visceral yet subtle way.” Mount Royal University journalism student Gabrielle Pyska describes her frustration “feeling like you cannot be the writer you want to be because of something you cannot control.” It was only in university that Pyska discovered the cause of her anxiety and feeling of claustrophobia when writing articles, meeting deadlines for class essays and organizing her thoughts. She has ADHD. Adam Pottle often thought his writing missed that “intangible value” the writers he idolizes possess. “This value functions like cartilage, tying the lines of text together into tight pulsing masses, so the pages throb with the immediacy of a quickened heart.” He identifies “internalized ableism” as tripping him up. Pottle is a Deaf writer. Articles on the benefits and challenges of collaborative writing projects have appeared in WestWord. Clem Martini's “On Writing A Graphic Memoir” appeared in the October–December 2018 issue. In it, Martini describes his relationship with his brother Olivier, an illustrator and artist. Despite Olivier’s mental health challenges, the brothers’ collaboration saw their graphic memoirs, A Bitter Medicine—A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness and The Unraveling, published. In this issue, Martini writes about what it means when the relationship with his brother is jeopardized. I hope the writers featured in this issue inspire you to confront your fears of writing about your fears. I welcome your comments about this issue of WestWord magazine. You can reach me by email at editor@writersguild.ab.ca.
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THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS?
ARTISTS NEED A GUARANTEED BASIC INCOME MARCELLO DI CINTIO AUTHOR PHOTO BY JAMES MAY
suspect I’m not the only one, but COVID-19 ruined my year. My new book, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers, scheduled to come out last fall, was pushed to May 2021. “There’s no point publishing books, at least physical ones, into this world,” my publisher wrote to me in March 2020. He hadn’t edited the second draft yet, and without his notes I couldn’t finish the manuscript. As a result, it would delay my last two advance payments. There was more. A lucrative assignment for Outside Magazine was cancelled. So was a story for Canadian Geographic. My Alberta Foundation for the Arts grant application was postponed, and a research grant I’d scored from Access Copyright was shrunk in half. The pandemic also shoved the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s annual WordsWorth youth writing camp out of Kamp Kiwanis and onto Zoom. While I was grateful to be on the muchdiminished roster of instructors, the shrunken 2020 camp paid about a third of what I’d earned in previous years. (As a mixed blessing, no meals were provided this time, either.) In any other year, I would’ve found a job waiting tables or tending bar. The restaurant business has long served as my temporary lifeboat during fallow financial times. Not so during 2020. Restaurants remained either shuttered or operating at reduced capacity. Grumpy middleaged servers were hardly in demand. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) rescued me. The $2,000 per month benefit—replaced in the fall by the $1,800 Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB)—allowed me to cover the bulk of my living expenses while figuring out what to do next. Like many writers I know, pandemic anxiety dulled my creativity, but at least the CERB meant I could focus what little attention I retained on writing rather than on existential financial angst.
I did not stop working. Far from it. I sent new pitches to magazines nearly every other week. I taught, and attended, classes at Omar Mouallem’s Pandemic University. I wrote on topics I’d never thought I’d ever write about: brides-to-be, medical cannabis, my newly collapsed marriage. As a travel writer who suddenly couldn’t travel, I scoured through old boxes of maps, photos and journals looking for story ideas. I knew even if my editor at Outside didn’t want to publish my ageing traveller’s elegy to Third World post offices—and she didn’t, calling my pitch “a bit sleepy”—I could at least pay my rent and feed my kid. Anxiety crashed back over me in December. I was among the more than 400,000 CERB recipients who received a letter informing us that we might not have been eligible for funding. To receive CERB, applicants needed to have earned at least $5,000 in 2019 or in the 12 months preceding their application. However, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) told me, and other artists, that art grant funding didn’t count as income under the CERB program. Almost my entire revenue in 2019 came from grants I received to support researching and writing a new book. So, not only was I “blocked” from applying for CERB—and its replacement, the CRB—but I needed to pay back the $18,500 I’d already received. The CRA reversed its nonsensical policy regarding the ineligibility of arts grants funding in January after a scathing story appeared in The Globe and Mail, in which I was featured. (This was not why I hoped my author photo would appear in The Globe this year.) As of the beginning of February, I remained “blocked” from applying for CRB as the CRA reviewed my file, and I’ve yet to speak to a CRA agent who has ever heard of an arts grant. Still, I’m confident I will be 3
deemed eligible for the funding and won’t have to pay anything back. These ongoing frustrations aside, I believe an important lesson is to be learned by the CERB experience. During these governmentsupported months, I realized that aside from a couple of short-lived author residencies, the only stable income I’ve ever earned as a writer came from CERB. I thought, too, how wonderful such a program would be during “normal” times. The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) agrees. Last July, TWUC joined with a coalition of arts groups and individual artists to pen the “Public Letter from the Arts Community for a Basic Income Guarantee.” The letter called on the federal government to build on programs like CERB and implement a universally accessible and unconditional basic income program. The signatories envision a guarantee that provides financial security without “eroding the existing support for arts and culture programs.” I am realistic. The chances of a guaranteed basic income for artists, or Canadians, are minuscule. Still, I can’t help but fantasize about a program that supports qualified professional artists with a monthly stipend. Artists that are fortunate enough to earn income outside the program—through project grants, prizes, residencies, book advances or fat royalty cheques, for example—would simply pay back their basic income at tax time. Imagine how much daring, inspiring, and culture-building work we could create with such a program in place. A boy can dream. Calgary author Marcello Di Cintio’s newest book, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers, will finally be published in May 2021. APRIL – JUNE 2021
ED’S NOTE
FINDINDING COMFORT AND INSPIRATION IN WORDS CAROL HOLMES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Welcome to the April-June issue of WestWord. Spring is here, the days of sunshine are longer, and the vaccine is being delivered. It is a wonderful start to the season. The writing of the winners of the 2020 Pandemic Postcards Contest began airing on CBC Daybreak with Russell Bowers in mid-March. They will run every Saturday and Sunday for eight weeks, so listen in for great talent. On April 8, the Alberta Literary Award finalists will be announced with readings by the finalists taking place later that month. In May, the WGA will showcase the work of members of this year’s mentorship program, and on June 9, host the 2021 Literary Awards Virtual Gala. Mark the dates in your calendar. This year’s annual conference, “Re-Orientation,” takes place online May 28-30 in partnership with the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. It is a great chance to connect and participate in workshops, panel sessions and hear keynote speakers. A virtual format will broaden the conference’s reach, and reduced travel costs for guest speakers will result in the involvement of more presenters than in the past. Opportunities for social interaction will be available through Connection Cafés, a virtual Happy Hour, and Discord (an instant messaging and digital distribution platform). The conference kicks off Friday evening with Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, followed on Saturday with Giller Prize winner Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How To Pronounce Knife, and on Sunday with Writers’ Trust winner Gil Adamson, author of The Ridgerunner. Pre-conference Blue Pencil Sessions will take place the week before the conference, beginning May 21. To counter participants’ Zoom fatigue, sessions will be recorded and available for a two-week period following the conference. For registration, schedule and ticket information, please visit the WGA website (writersguild.ca). Early bird rates apply until April 7. Please note, the Saturday 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. workshop with Anthony Doerr, “Breaking the Pre- off the -Dictable,” is a separately ticketed event and not included in the conference fee. You can register for it on the conference website or at alexandrawriters.org/courses/anthonydoerr-feature. The workshop will not be recorded. Working from home this year has been odd. With less travel time and in-person meetings, I thought my schedule would free up, but not so. I know it is the case with others, or perhaps for some it’s a feeling that time has gone by with nothing accomplished. This spring, I will take time off to refresh, shut down my computer and embrace the changes in the season and, if motivated, make a deep clean of my storage cupboard. It has been a tough year. Spring is a season of rejuvenation. I hope you find comfort and inspiration in words. Take care, be kind, and join with others, virtually or in person, to bring in a new season and warm days ahead. All the best with your writing. THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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NOTE FROM THE BOARD
CHANGES MADE TO WGA BOARD CAROL PARCHEWSKY PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Greetings from the Board of Directors! It has been a challenging year for the WGA Board of Directors. Because of personal circumstances, we made changes to the board and I was appointed president at an emergent meeting in December 2020. • I would like to welcome Janet Gurtler to the board as secretary and Nicolas Brown as treasurer for the 2020/2021 term. • I would like to welcome Lori Hahnel and Teresa Wouters back to the board as members at large for the 2020/2021 term. • I would like to thank Leslie Chivers for his work as WGA president in 2019–2020. Leslie will serve as past president. • I would like to thank Kevin Thornton (secretary), Therese Greenwood (member at large) for their work on the board in 2019–2020. • Susan Carpenter did an excellent job as treasurer; regrettably, she is stepping down. Thank you, Susan, for your work in 2019–2021. When board vacancies occur mid-year, they may be filled from the general WGA membership until the next annual general meeting. I am happy to announce we have filled the vacancies and I look forward to working with our new board members. For the board elections at the 2021 AGM, we will have several openings as members reach the end of their two-year terms, and the positions filled for the mid-year vacancies will be up for election. Contact me or other members of the board for information on how you can support the WGA as we move forward in achieving our strategic goals. Please consider this exciting opportunity to become more involved with the WGA! In January, the board held its yearly retreat virtually. We focused on board roles and responsibilities, strategic plan review, fund development, equity, bylaws, and setting board goals for the rest of the year. We reviewed how the WGA is doing in this uncertain time of COVID-19 and discussed how to position ourselves through the rest of the pandemic. Our staff, led by Executive Director Carol Holmes, continue to do an excellent job working virtually and providing programming online. We are concerned about funding uncertainties and are working to strengthen our fund development action plan. We have work to do to move ahead in our mission to support and advocate for writers and offer opportunities to grow and connect while enriching Alberta’s culture and economy. I am fortunate to have enthusiastic, energetic board members to work with me to support our members. In the coming months, the board will update the strategic plan actions to move forward on fund development, bylaw review, equity and board development. I encourage you to contact me (cparch@me.com), any member of the board, or the WGA staff with fundraising opportunities, challenges and successes with your writing, and areas where support and advocacy is needed for writers. We would love to hear from you! I wish you and your family good health, and inspiration and success for you in your artistic explorations! 5
APRIL – JUNE 2021
WRITE/RIGHT: LAW FOR WRITERS
©OLLABORATIVE CONSENSUS Credit, Copyright and Compensation JEANANNE KIRWIN, Q.C.
This column does not contain legal advice, but rather merely legal information. Always consult with a lawyer to discuss your situation and to review a contract for you.
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ollaborative writing can be thrilling. Riffing on shared ideas, feeding off shared energy, and basking in good company during what is often a solitary endeavour can be blissful. Collaboration often yields legendary works of art larger than each contributor could alone have produced. Yet beneath the flurries of creativity, and once the imaginative dust settles, practical and legal questions await. How do the collaborators share the workload? How do they share the credit and the proceeds generated by their joint creative work? A recent U.K. case based upon the film Florence Foster Jenkins, and an older Canadian case, Neudorf v. Nettwerk Productions Ltd., illustrates what happens when co-writers cannot agree in advance what each party will gain from successful commercialization of the work their collaborative effort produces. What happens is a lawsuit, with the concomitant anxiety borne of uncertainty and the certainty of unforeseen expenses of time and money. Courts are asked to determine whether minor collaborators are joint authors and what rights flow from that status. In the Florence Foster Jenkins case, writer Julia Kogan sued co-writer Nicholas Martin and the two film production companies respecting a dispute over crediting her as a co-author and partial copyright owner of the popular movie’s screenplay. Kogan lost at trial in 2017 and appealed the decision
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
in 2019. In 2020, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ruled her contribution met the threshold test as a joint author and ordered the film companies to credit her as co-author of the screenplay. In the Canadian case, writer Darryl Neudorf sued famous songstress Sarah McLachlan and her record label for song writing credit, copyright infringement and a share of the royalties from four songs on her 1988 debut album Touch. He lost after an eightmonth trial. The key issue was framed this way: “What kind of contribution attracts copyright protection? What makes [this] question hard to answer is that there were no contracts signed by anyone involved in the recording session.” Rather than letting a court decide how your contribution corresponds in value in terms of credit, copyright ownership and compensation, it makes sense for collaborators to resolve those matters for themselves—ahead of commercialization and, ideally, well before the last word is written. In the pauses between riffs, frenzies and flurries, discuss the terms listed. When you come to a consensus on a point, add it to a written term sheet. Turn the sheet into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that all collaborators sign. Then hire a lawyer to flesh out a complete and binding agreement based on the skeletal terms of the MOU. 6
Collaboration often yields legendary works of art larger than each contributor could alone have produced.
TERMS FOR COLLABORATORS TO DISCUSS 1. What is the goal of the collaboration— what do you intend to create? Describe and define the work by giving it a working title. 2. What are the authors’ respective roles and responsibilities—who contributes what and when? All authors should promise the others that their contributions are original, do not breach anyone’s privacy rights and are not defamatory. 3. Will the authors share equally in copyright allocation? If not, what percentages are allocated to each? 4. How will revenues be shared? Often revenue sharing mirrors copyright allocation, but not always. Spell that out.
WRITE/RIGHT: LAW FOR WRITERS 5. Who will register the copyright? (You always register your copyright … right?) 6. Who gets what credit? And what words are used to describe that credit? A related point: the creators should give each other permission to use each other’s names and likenesses for promotional purposes. 7. How will expenses be authorized and how will they be reimbursed? 8. How are disputes and conflicts handled? What happens if someone is unable or unwilling to complete their contribution? What happens if someone does not deliver on time? 9. What happens if your wildest dreams come true and the work of art becomes a sensation? Who licenses and reaps the benefit of royalties derived from derivative works like plays, movies, songs and merchandise? Or from spin-offs, prequels and sequels? And who gets what proportion? Instead of viewing sober contemplation on such matters as interruptions to the creative flow, think of consensusbuilding as akin to signing a pre-nuptial with people whose future you may well share. The short hours required to come to terms on the points listed can spare you a relative eternity disentangling disagreements and misunderstandings, or worse, dealing with irreconcilable differences through lawsuits. Time devoted to attempting consensus might even show you and your fellow creators that as brilliant as you may be as collaborators, you will never agree on the nitty-gritty of completing your work or on how to commercialize it. Enjoy your collaborations and make sure you also enjoy the credit, copyright and compensation that come with them!
WriteClick
E-NEWSLETTER
Jeananne Kirwin, Q.C., a lawyer in Edmonton, practices in the areas of intellectual property and corporate/commercial law with an emphasis on trademark and copyright registration and enforcement (kirwinllp.com).
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Read WriteClick for the latest literary arts news, community events and conferences, markets, awards, grants, contests and competitions. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
Thrillers probe where we’re least comfortable (that’s where the thrill comes from). Intrusive thoughts are ginned up by jealousy, hate or lust. The voyeurism we gleefully relish in—even if we won’t admit it.
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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AUTHOR PHOTO BY JODI O (JOPHOTO.INFO)
FEATURE
P. J. VERNON
WE ARE ALL VILLAINS IN SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY But someone else’s story isn’t our own
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hen it came to makebelieve, this kid always played the villain. Vader over Skywalker. Ursula over the Little Mermaid. While friends fought tooth and nail for the coveted role of Whatever Color Power Ranger, wicked Rita Rapunzel was all mine. Why the hell would anyone want to be the hero? Heroes were boring. Banal. They were fighting for the status quo while villains challenged the system. Villains were magnetic. Villains had a five-year strategic plan. Sure, behaving badly is fun; the pursuit of unfettered power or revenge or whatever is thrilling. But beyond swishy black capes and planet-shattering super lasers is something else, villains don’t fit in. Their very survival is threatening. They’re Them and everyone else is Us. As a queer kid white-knuckling his way through life in the Bible Belt, villains were, above all else, relatable. From the rigid pews of church and school, I was made to feel like one every day. When you’re bound for hell with the worst of them, is it unreasonable to question the moral authority fating you to burn alongside Caligula and Stalin for eternity? When survival is tethered to lies about who you are and who you love, is dishonesty really a vice? When your community holds no place for you, should its norms and mores go unchallenged? Thrillers—or suspense or domestic noir, depending on who you ask and what day—are where moral compasses are stresstested and the idea we’ve evolved beyond our more primordial urges, exposed as a
tissue-paper thin veneer. Thrillers probe where we’re least comfortable (that’s where the thrill comes from). Intrusive thoughts are ginned up by jealousy, hate or lust. The voyeurism we gleefully relish in—even if we won’t admit it. We don’t belong in the relationships and therapy sessions and bedrooms of strangers—but we’d have a hell of a time as a fly on the wall. As humans, we engage in both likable and unlikable behaviour, and thriller readers do not expect that thriller writers deliver sympathetic protagonists. All they ask of characters is that they are engaging and relatable. If any of us can’t relate to notions of revenge and fear and regret, maybe we aren’t honest with ourselves. Of course, suspenseful tales excite us. They examine trust—in our loved ones, our communities, ourselves—and force the question, “Could this happen to me?” Likewise, when I started experimenting with the genre, my first instinct was to anchor narratives around queer protagonists—after all, it’s what I know best. While I weighed writing characters like me into manuscripts I hoped to sell one day, is there a reason I’m not represented on the pages of all these thrilling breakout hits? Whatever creative rocket fuel my lived experiences as a gay man would’ve given my plots was no match for one enormous fear: which large publisher with international distribution would ever buy a gay thriller? More important, what casual “mainstream” reader will pick up a book like this? Not a gay memoir in which 9
my wounds and traumas reopened, not a coming-out drama of literary fiction— tragic or comical or otherwise—but a good old-fashioned thriller brimming with gaslighting and murder and maybe a little toxic sex here and there (you know, a Gillian Flynn novel… just gay)? I shared an identity with fictional characters in Will & Grace, not in crime fiction with huge press backing. These stories exist. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came first, and I’ve had the privilege of being swept away by tremendous, page-turning crime novels from folks like the awardwinning Michael Nava (Carved in Bone is stunning). Growing up in rural South Carolina, where Walmart shelves were the only retail shelves, I often wonder what might’ve been different. What if I could travel back in time and leave one of Nava’s novels somewhere for Teenage Me to discover? But I have no time machine, and the transformation of crime fiction that brought us queer novels like Kelly J. Ford’s Cottonmouths, John Fram’s The Bright Lands, and Micah Nemerever’s These Violent Delights hadn’t reached me as I began to write. So, there I was, years later, querying literary agents with a not-gay-but-still-verythrilling manuscript (ultimately published as my debut When You Find Me) when it happened. I was struck by a f--k it! moment spurred by the hundreds of rejections I’d collected and sustained through watching authors like Kellye Garrett, renowned for her multi-award-winning The Detective APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
Be fearless with your voice and your stories. Be stubborn. Yes, talent matters—but it’s entirely learnable through practicing our craft and giving our innate, unique voices room to run on the page. We will be rejected, but it only takes one yes. I opened over 200 nos. None of them mattered or impacted that single yes. by Day series, fiercely advocate for representation of all voices in our genre. Fearless from having sold nothing at the time—and having nothing at stake—I feverishly drafted what would become Bath Haus over a summer. My only worry became telling the best story I could in the best possible way I could tell it, and I held nothing back. I began to write a very dark, very honest, and very gay thriller. Two things were clear: First, characters from any marginalized community will navigate a crime novel differently. Interactions with police, the stakes, everything changes if The Girl on the Train is a Black woman, or if Gone Girl ’s Amy becomes Nick’s gay husband. Second, queer characters have a place in crime fiction far beyond their queerness. Our stories, with all their depth and richness, belong in thrillers. This narrative I’d started would be no coming-out story; instead, it would follow the same genre conventions its mainstream shelf-mates do. I opened the book somewhere provocative. The titular Haus, a gay bathhouse where anonymous sex is freely available at the expense of vulnerability. The sort of place you could be both almost-murdered and desperate to keep it secret. In villainous fashion, my main character Oliver Park is cheating on his husband from page one. Liberated to draw on my identity for the sake of story, the book—as the cliché goes—wrote itself. I was free to play with ideas like the contrast between growing up gay in healthy, supportive environments vs. conservative communities, tropey plot THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
devices applied to fresh queer characters, and the hidden costs of progress. With all the rights that marriage affords (something this American author was only recently entitled to) come all the spousal expectations and centuries of patriarchal baggage. See, as a kid, I dug villains because they felt like me. Outcast and misguided. Or more accurately, a villain only because someone else was telling their story. The book’s journey mirrors its author’s. The day I told my story was the day I stopped feeling like a villain. The day I decided to write Bath Haus was the day it stopped feeling unsellable. And then I sold it. I sold my gay, unsellable thriller to the biggest publisher in the world in the biggest deal of my life. I share this because we cut our teeth on mistakes, and it turns out I’d been wrong. Wrong for thinking there wasn’t space for me—for characters like me—on those rural Walmart bookshelves of my youth. Wrong for letting fear of what I don’t know and can’t control box in my creativity. And wonderfully wrong for worrying that those amazing, voracious, sophisticated folks we call thriller readers wouldn’t dig a queer one. They dig good stories. Be fearless with your voice and your stories. Be stubborn. Yes, talent matters— but it’s entirely learnable through practicing our craft and giving our innate, unique voices room to run on the page. We will be rejected, but it only takes one yes. I opened over 200 nos. None of them mattered or impacted that single yes. Luck matters. Timing matters. But if inking a 10
book deal is our goal, we only fail if we quit. There is no such thing as “new” ideas in fiction, but that’s the miraculous thing about our voices. They’re exclusively ours. Until we tell them, the world has never read any stories in our voices. Write the one you want. Experiment in genres and mediums and creative routines, but bring your vision and voice center stage and be confident that’s where it belongs. Eye writing advice and commentary from authors like me with suspicion because you decide what pieces to keep or not. For example, I don’t write every day. I applaud those who do, but that advice doesn’t work for me. When I’m punishing myself because life is chaotic and I can’t find time to fire up a word processor, my projects don’t move forward. My vision and voice suffer, which is the metric against which I measure and weigh everything. Of course, we all leave a bit of ourselves behind on the page, too. Though they’re often (hopefully?) vastly different, we draw on lived experiences and pain and trauma when the stories we create demand it. It’s an extractive process, and it undeniably takes from us. Sometimes it can feel like too much. When this happens, shut your laptop—or your notebook or whatever you use to get your words out—and do something you love. For me, nothing beats sunshine on the back of my neck in a leafy park. But always go back. Don’t stop. Keep going. We are all villains in someone else’s story, but someone else’s story isn’t our own. And if anyone ever suggests yours doesn’t belong, they couldn’t be more mistaken. Your story—no matter what it is—has never been told. Not in your voice. Not yet. P. J. Vernon was born in South Carolina. A “rising star thriller writer” (Library Journal), Vernon’s debut, When You Find Me, was both an Audible Plus #1 Listen and Top Ten U.S. Audiobook (Associated Press). His next novel, Bath Haus, pitched as “Gone Girl with gays and Grindr,” releases June 15, 2021 from Doubleday. The author lives in Calgary with his husband and two wily dogs. Contact pj@pjvernonbooks.com for more information.
FEATURE
TERESA WONG
I HEAR THE IMAGE WORLD CALLING TO ME The making of a graphic memoir
Because a story is easy to read does not make it less worthy as literature, and graphic novels have proven in the past 30 years that they have serious literary value, telling sophisticated, multi-layered narratives with intricate plots and rich character development. From Jeff Lemire’s fictionalized Southwestern Ontario community in Essex County to Marjane Satrapi’s childhood experiences during Iran’s Islamic Revolution in Persepolis, the best graphic narratives challenge readers to make meaning from the complexities of life. As with all good literature, graphic novels are nuanced and powerful, pulling you in and staying with you long after you’ve put the book down. In recent years, literary prize committees have recognized the rise of graphic narratives in the mainstream. For the first time in its history, the Scotiabank Giller Prize included a graphic novel, Seth’s Clyde Fans, on its 2020 longlist. Similarly, in 2018, the Man Booker Prize longlisted Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, a work Zadie Smith called “the best book—in any medium—I have read about our current moment.”
DEAR SCARLET MEMOIR, PHOTO BY KELLY MACDONALD
I
n early 2020, Kate Beaton posted a short autobiographical comic strip on Twitter that I think about almost every time I draw. In the comic, the awardwinning Canadian cartoonist depicts herself toiling away at her graphic novel manuscript, then taking a coffee break with her mother, who cheerfully says, “You know, it doesn’t take any time at all to read a book when it’s cartoons. I’m halfway through the one you gave me this morning!” The final panel shows Beaton, haggard yet resigned, saying, “Cool.”
I am convinced the most time-consuming way to create a book is as a graphic narrative. Each panel is a small work of art and putting together a full manuscript requires drawing and redrawing the entire book several times. And yes, I find it deflating to think that, after all the work that goes into them, most graphic novels are read in one sitting. But what bothers me most is when graphic books are disparaged as somehow less “literary” than their prose counterparts. 11
About five years ago, I realized that reading graphic novels and memoirs made me want to create my own, no matter how difficult or tedious the process. Although I was a writer with no illustrating skills, I knew the story I was working on—about my first child’s birth and my subsequent struggle with postpartum depression—would be best told as a comic. So much of new motherhood is spent in silence. You are stuck at home with nobody to talk to other than a baby, and I wanted to convey just how quiet and lonely I was during that time.
As with all good literature, graphic novels are nuanced and powerful, pulling you in and staying with you long after you’ve put the book down. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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AUTHOR PHOTO BY KELLY MACDONALD
FEATURE Back then, I wrote prose exclusively, and I assumed I would find a collaborator to illustrate the book, but I also had a vision of what it would look like, so I bought a sketchbook and got to work. I cut my script into small chunks and pasted the pieces on the left (verso) side of each page and began sketching rough “storyboard” panels on the right (recto) side. While doing so, I tried to keep in mind everything I loved about the compelling graphic narratives I’d read—how creators like Satrapi, Simone Lia, Adrian Tomine, Alison Bechdel, Ivan Brunetti and others convey meaning through text, images and sequential panels. There are things you can only do in comics, such as stopping time and having the reader explore a narrative in a non-linear way. Lucy Knisley does this by incorporating whimsical diagrams into her work and Richard McGuire, in Here, layers fragments of narrative from multiple periods onto the same page.
The months I spent on the book’s first draft (storyboard) were some of the most invigorating of my life. Through making marks on paper and trying to communicate not only verbally but visually, I rediscovered what cartoonist
Though I still consider myself a writer first, drawing has revolutionized my creative practice. and educator Lynda Barry calls “the image world,” a place we all accessed regularly as children but which many of us left long ago. In her books and workshops, Barry talks about why drawing and writing are not separate activities for little kids and why our creative selves suffer a profound loss when we cease to draw. According to Barry, drawing is an essential human activity, just like singing and dancing, and it helps writers access deeper, more resonant imagery. She says, “Drawing is one of our native languages… and as its own language, drawing allows you to express things that you can’t just do with words in the same way.” Once I finished storyboarding my book, I showed it to an illustrator friend, hoping he would help me draw it. After reading it, he refused, saying, “It is such a personal story. It has to come from your own hand.” Despite my embarrassingly amateur skills, I Googled “How to draw a graphic novel” and started working. Six months later, I had a second draft.
ILLUSTRATION FROM DEAR SCARLET
As a newer—arguably “outsider”—form of literature, graphic narratives are often experimental and creators are growing in ambition, testing the boundaries of what’s possible through the marriage of words and pictures. This experimentation is exciting and inspiring to me, both as a reader and a creator.
Though I still consider myself a writer first, drawing has revolutionized my creative practice. It helps me approach storytelling from a new perspective to find unexpected connections, forces me away from the screen and, most important,
I redrew the manuscript a third time and Arsenal Pulp Press published it in 2019. While I cringe at the quality of some illustrations in the book, I am glad I told the story as a graphic narrative. The comics format gave me the chance to explore and relate my experience with new motherhood in a visceral yet subtle way. I believe that memoirs can benefit from a graphic treatment because comics are adept at handling interiority and distinctive points of view. 13
ILLUSTRATION FROM DEAR SCARLET
makes me feel younger and more alive. It has brought a playfulness to my work that benefits both my prose and my comics. Fun is not the same as easy, however. And as I work on my next graphic memoir, the thought of pencilling and inking page after page over many months—possibly years—is daunting. But it is a worthwhile pursuit, regardless of how quickly a reader might devour the book or whether graphic narratives get the accolades and awards they deserve. I hear the image world calling to me in my native language, and I must answer. Teresa Wong is the author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. The book was a finalist for The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2020. Her comics have appeared in The Believer, Event Magazine and The Rumpus. Learn more at byteresawong.com. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (*see Sources), ADHD or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is “one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders of childhood” and will often continue into adulthood. People with ADHD can have trouble with memory, are highly active or fidgety, and have difficulty starting tasks and finishing them. These characteristics explain why people with ADHD may have difficulty reading or writing.
AUTHOR PHOTO BY KELSEY ENG
GABRIELLE PYSKA
THE WRITER, WRITING AND ADHD
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Feeling like you can’t be the writer you want to be because of something you can’t control
t is 1:27 A.M. on a Thursday, and I am sitting on the floor of my living room with my third coffee of the day, my laptop, and my disarray of notes scattered across the floor. As the minutes tick by, I read and reread my notes in frustration, as if reading the same thing over again will help my writing process. As my brain goes a million miles an hour with ideas, quotes, and facts from the web, I stare at the empty page on my laptop as if it had been mocking me for days. I’ve got nothing. Even if I had something to write, my brain would have absorbed it, processed it, and moved onto the next idea or stimulation before I could make my fingers type out the words.
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
Diamonds form under pressure. That is what I told myself throughout high school, as I procrastinated writing every one of my essays until the night before, only to start actually writing when the sun rose. I thought this was the process of every writer. Although my grades remained high, I wondered if I would ever write an essay or a piece of fiction without the anxiety and claustrophobic feelings that come with deadlines. It was only in university that I found the answer to what I called “my writer’s block.” But it came not from a creative idea, a sudden motivational aspiration, or a better high-speed laptop. It came in the form of a diagnosis: ADHD. 14
As the research suggests, the conflict between people with ADHD and neurotypical simple tasks such as reading or writing are widespread. A 2011 study on the relationship between children with ADHD and their reading and writing skills found that “of the 379 children studied who met criteria for the disorder, 57 per cent of girls had writing problems versus 10 per cent of girls without ADHD,” and that “nearly two-thirds of boys had some issues writing versus 17 per cent of boys without” (**see Sources). Further, an article from the European Journal of Psychology of Education found that “ADHD children may encounter severe difficulties in expressive writing that are not due to differences in knowledge about how to write” (***see Sources). This research, and my diagnosis, came to me with a blast of relief. After 15 years of a constant battle between my passion for writing and my procrastination, I had an answer outside of being lazy or unmotivated. However, it wasn’t until starting this article that I discovered many authors and writers struggled in the same way. Nicole Bross, an author based in Calgary, wrote about her experiences and struggles with having ADHD and pursuing a writing career. In an article published in Books by Women literary magazine, she wrote: “Writing and publishing a novel is an accomplishment few achieve, and those who do know how much work it is to make it to ‘the end.’ Now imagine doing all that when your brain is actively trying to sabotage you every way it can. That’s
FEATURE what it’s like trying to be a writer when you have ADHD” (****see Sources).
that,” said Erickson. “So, it was actually pretty difficult.”
Bross told me she only received a diagnosis after her daughter was diagnosed and that she didn’t believe it at first. “I had a lot of the same misperceptions about ADHD that a lot of people do,” she said. “So, it took me awhile to accept and de-program my brain from all of those negative thoughts about myself and about my work process.”
During my interviews with Erickson and Bross, I was not only comforted with the similarities between them and me, but I was wildly impressed. Bross, who had just published her debut novel, Past Presence, and Erickson, who had graduated from not one, but two master’s programs, did so while struggling with ADHD. I wondered how they pushed past their struggles in writing to continue pursuing their goals. After talking about their experiences, I asked them what helped them get past their neurological writers’ block, as well as tips and tricks for other writers struggling with ADHD.
Bross said it was difficult because she felt she was too hard on herself for procrastinating or being unable to work on her writing. “Those were always things that I assumed meant I was lazy, inconsiderate, selfish or thoughtless,” she said. “And it never really occurred to me that it was because there is a difference in my brain and how it processes information, memory and tasks.” Speaking to her brought me a feeling of immense joy and relief. Not only was ADHD and difficulties writing or starting projects a common crossover, but it meant I wasn’t the only adult living with these struggles. With research focusing primarily on children with ADHD, it was refreshing to hear the all too familiar thoughts and insecurities from another adult writer. Zac Erickson, a registered psychologist for Shift Psych, in Edmonton, focuses on clients who struggle with anxiety, depression, and specifically, adult ADHD. After a phone interview with him, I discovered he was diagnosed with ADHD in college and his diagnosis drove him to specialize in this field. After completing his first master’s degree in neuroscience and then a second master’s in education focusing on counselling psychology, Erickson said he began concentrating on ADHD upon graduation in 2017. He said that during his first master’s, he found writing his thesis was the most difficult part. “If there’s anything that is specifically designed to target all of the things that are really hard about ADHD, like selfmotivation and being organized, it was
“A lot more kindness and grace towards myself and just understanding that it is a challenge and it’s something that I need to work on, but it doesn’t make me a bad person,” Bross said. “Really spend some time developing your skills to work with it. Because it isn’t something that has to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do.” I tried a technique that Erickson learned in college. The Pomodoro Technique involves setting a timer and working in timed intervals of 25 minutes. Once the allocated time is up, you take a fiveminute break and set the timer again. Erickson explained that this technique helped him through his thesis, as by the time 25 minutes came around the corner, he would be in enough of a writing groove to continue with no breaks. After speaking to the two of them, I realized many adults and writers struggle with the same issues I have, and they may also feel alone in their experiences and are searching for ways to improve. Feeling like you cannot be the writer you want to be because of something you cannot control is extremely isolating. Accepting who you are and finding the resources you need to improve, such as counselling, medication or behavioural therapy, can make the difference in changing your constant mental block into something you can grow past. 15
Many adults and writers struggle with the same issues I have, and they may also feel alone in their experiences and are searching for ways to improve. “I tell my clients this all the time, that yes, in certain circumstances, ADHD feels like it’s a real hindrance, and it’s something that’s really hard, and it feels like a disability,” Erickson said. “But in other situations, there are absolutely other situations where having ADHD can feel like a superpower. The ability to hyperfocus on things, the ability to be really passionate and engaging. If you can learn how to handle your own brain and work with it, it can absolutely be a great thing.” Sources
* cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/facts.html# ADHDAdults ** search-proquest-com.libproxy.mtroyal.ca/ docview/915Add source: 163540?accountid= 1343&pq-origsite=primo *** ibrarysearch.mtroyal.ca/discovery/ fulldisplay?context=PC&vid=01 MTROYAL_INST:02MTROYAL_ INST&search_scope=MRULibrary&tab= MRULibraryResources&docid=cdi_ proquest_journals_1889757002 **** booksbywomen.org/when-your-brain-isthe-enemy-life-as-a-writer-with-adhd/ —— Gabrielle Pyska was born and raised in Lethbridge, Alberta. She has been writing stories for as long as she can remember. With an insatiable curiosity and a passion for storytelling, Pyska is pursuing a degree in journalism at Mount Royal University. She has experience in writing on topics surrounding mental health and human rights issues. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
ADAM POTTLE
NOTES ON A VIVISECTION Becoming a Deaf writer
T
wo years ago, I released a book called Voice: On Writing with Deafness. Published by the University of Regina Press, it is part of a series on the craft of writing. In the book, I spoke about growing up Deaf in a hearing family and how learning to accept myself as a Deaf person coincided with my development as a writer. “I wouldn’t be a writer,” I said, “if I wasn’t Deaf.” To this day, I feel ambivalent about writing that book. First, I was convinced I had nothing valuable to say about the craft of writing. I was thirty-five when the book came out—not a teeny-bopper, but also not a sage. I’d been taught that writing wisdom must come from elders with white hair and stores of experience to draw upon rather than upstart little shits like me. Also, as a Deaf person, I worried that whatever I had to say wouldn’t be useful to anyone except me. Second, it was personal. Writing the book was like performing a slow vivisection on myself. I had to peel myself open and probe through the detritus. I much prefer working behind the shield of fiction, exploring memories and experiences symbolically instead of facing them headon. Not because I’m a coward—or maybe because I am. The distance of fiction allows for clearer vision. Things make more sense when filtered through people who’ve never lived and events that have never taken place. Nonfiction brings me close to the subject. It’s difficult to write when the people you know and the things you’ve experienced are crowding right before your eyes. You need to shove them into bottles, date them, and label them, a messy process.
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
Third, I knew the book would become outdated. I’m still developing as a person and as an artist. I am still becoming comfortable being Deaf and using American Sign Language. I’m trying to treat myself more gently and seek positive, understanding relationships to help combat a lifetime of internalized ableism, which the book explores in depth. I had all these thoughts before Voice came out in March 2019. I look back on the book now, and that ambivalence flutters in the recesses of my mind. I feel fraudulent. Perhaps I should ask the University of Regina Press to stop selling the book? Many things have made me question my experiences; some are set in type within that book and cannot be revised or excised. A few years ago, I wrote a play called The Black Drum, the world’s first all-Deaf musical performed in Toronto and at a Deaf arts festival in Reims, France, just a few months after Voice was released. At the festival, I plunged into the Deaf world; I saw thousands of Deaf people speaking dozens of Sign Languages in one place. It wasn’t culture shock. It was a cultural lightning storm that left me shaken. But as I write this article—writing being the vehicle through which I do my most generous thinking—my ambivalence is tempered by the tender warmth of peace. I’ve always felt my writing was missing something. Even in my best work, I feel there’s a level I didn’t achieve, an intangible value that my idols (Richard Van Camp, Albert Camus, Eden Robinson, Toni Morrison, Claudia 16
Rankine, among others) possess. This value functions like cartilage, tying the lines of text together into tight pulsing masses so the pages throb with the immediacy of a quickened heart. My writing, by comparison, is nought but stale air. But then I realized that’s the ableism talking. Last July, I began writing a new novel, the first novel I’ve ever written featuring a Deaf protagonist. I had this story in my head for years, but I could never write it. I didn’t have the experience to do so: part of the novel focuses on the protagonist learning to Sign (albeit under unusual circumstances). I had to wait until I understood the beauty of Sign Language, until I inhabited its muscular cadences and exhilarating tempo. It is by far the most challenging novel I’ve ever written. How do you write from the perspective of someone who has no language, as my protagonist does for the first half of the novel? And converting Sign to text is like trying to wrestle a river into a shoebox. I’ve had days where I managed only 20 words. Text runs in rigid lines from left to right, Sign Language flows in all directions. A person using Sign conjures objects out of thin air. If French is the language of love, Sign is the language of imagination. Internalized ableism convinces you that no matter how good your work is, something will always be wrong with it. I’ve published four books, and whenever I think about them, I still ponder the errors I left with them. I hope that once I finish the first draft of this novel, I will have
FEATURE
Text runs in rigid lines from left to right, Sign Language flows in all directions. A person using Sign conjures objects out of thin air. If French is the language of love, Sign is the language of imagination.
AUTHOR PHOTO BY TENILLE CAMPBELL OF SWEETMOON PHOTOGRAPHY
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APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE only the writer’s typical insecurity about it and not the added burden of ableism. My writing has changed in these last two years; I think for the better. Maybe it would’ve changed even if I had not written Voice, but I don’t think it would have changed as much or as quickly. I have lowered the shield of fiction—my subject matter is hitting closer to home. I’m not comfortable with that, but Martin Scorsese said that the most personal is the most creative, so I will trust in that and trust in myself. That’s the writer’s journey: developing trust in your abilities and your perspective and liberating yourself through words. When you perform a vivisection on yourself, you can’t sew yourself up again. You stay open, and you can choose to remain in place and fester, with all your
experiences necrotizing, or you can rearrange and preserve your experiences with care, all while pursuing new endeavours in your vulnerable state, cultivating strength and beauty within that vulnerability. Growth is a lifelong endeavour. I never want to stop learning. The world is infused with possibilities, and it’s heartbreaking many people choose stasis. I dare to continue growing, as it sometimes requires me to make excruciating choices. I hope I become gentler and more welcoming as a person and in my art. But growth, artistic and personal, means nothing if we don’t remember how we got there. When you climb a mountain, you take your body and all the work preparing for the climb. Memories are a writer’s work, a writer’s preparation. Fortunately,
Summer Writing Series
• Learn from professional authors!
OPEN ENROLMENT: No prerequisites; no program admission required!
Adam Pottle is a Deaf author whose recent works include the memoir Voice: On Writing with Deafness, the groundbreaking musical The Black Drum, and the award-winning novella The Bus. He is working on a new novel. Pottle lives in Saskatoon.
APR. 30 @ 1 PM ET
• Opportunity to network with industry professionals and fellow writers • And more!
NAME YOUR PRICE!
For more information, visit:
All proceeds donated to Kemosa Scholarship for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers Who Write
uab.ca/we
register at pandemicuniversity.com
Questions? Contact codesign@ualberta.ca
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
So that’s what I’ll do. Gratefully.
Bestselling author Waubgeshig Rice shares his process for imagining plot, creating characters, and developing the worlds they’ll inhabit.
• Creative writing workshops will include: spoken word, writing menace, writing about and with joy, playwriting, and memoir
• Celebrate and share new writing at the virtual open mic and submit to the summer online writing gallery
I’m tired of questioning myself. I’m tired of ambivalence. I prefer to create.
PLANNING THE NOVEL
A series of online writing workshops running Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 8:30 pm, July 12-16 & July 19-23, 2021.
• Professional development workshops will include: grant writing, multimedia interviews, and book publishing
I’ve put all my vital memories into a box. I may feel differently about them over time—they may take on a brighter glow or a grimmer pall. They may shapeshift; they may fade away. That’s okay. That’s what growth is. Life is the practice of perpetual revision. We’re continually rewriting our own stories—at least we should be—and that means leaving older stories behind.
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FEATURE
TYLER GAJDA
SO, YOU’VE DECIDED TO START A VLOG Tips for video, audio and filming TYLER GAJDA
Y
ou’ve settled on a theme. You’ve identified your audience. You’ve created a short list of topics and scripted your opening video. But wait, is something missing?
Right, the video camera! The microphone. The green screen? Do you need a green screen? As personal video content grows in popularity, vlogs have become the natural outlet for anyone looking to expand their brand. Whether it’s showing a window into your professional life or sharing adorable pet videos, a well-managed library of short videos is an essential tool for engaging your audience regularly. But if you’re just getting into video production, it can feel like there’s a small studio’s worth of video equipment to buy before you can start. And if you want your vlog to look a couple of steps above an afternoon Zoom call, you’ll need to upgrade something. The only question is what? Many factors will affect how your finished product will look, but I’m going to cover the two most basic: video and audio. Luckily, in each of those categories, you already have the tools you need right at your fingertips. It’s your phone. Your phone’s camera is already more powerful than the cameras used to film your favourite childhood movies, and your phone’s microphone, though mediocre, is suited for recording your lovely voice. Many of the world’s most popular vloggers still use their phones
to record, augmenting their cameras with professional lighting, makeup and sometimes an entire video crew. Although your finished product won’t have the same polish as a famous vlogger’s, I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you in on a couple of their secrets. To make professional video content, the most important factor is your audio. Yes, you read that right. Your audience will tolerate, and often miss, any quirks or irregularities in your video. But, even the slightest pop or crackling in your audio will drive them bonkers. Prioritize your audio, as it matters most. To do this, find the quietest room in your home—one where the pipes aren’t too loud. Turn off the dishwasher. Keep out the pets. Close the door. Sit in silence in the room and pay attention to everything around you. If you hear anything louder than a whisper, your microphone will pick that up. Most bedrooms are quiet enough. Some people put their microphones in the closet, facing outwards. The clothes dampen the white noise of the house. Trust me; it works better than it sounds. Once you find a room and set up where your voice comes through loud and clear, you’ll have your new recording studio, which means your next step is to turn your back to the camera and see what’s behind you. Hopefully, it’s not a basket of dirty laundry. If it is a basket of dirty laundry, don’t be afraid to move it somewhere else while you film. Make the space around you neat and presentable. You are trying to present yourself at your best. 19
Once your recording area is to your liking, the last thing to consider is your image quality. Film without holding your camera in your hands. Prop up the camera against some books, making sure not to cover the microphone. Set lamps in the room, place them behind the camera and pointed at the wall. The goal is to illuminate your lovely face without adding glare that makes you squint. Finally, and most important, make sure you’re framed well in the shot. You should be showing from the chest up with your head visible—no cutting it off at the forehead. Now start vlogging. When the time comes to upgrade, there are plenty of small purchases you can make, one piece at a time, to improve your quality, from built-in phone holders with a lighting array to external microphones, professional editing software, all the way up to DSLRs (digital single-lens reflex cameras). Resist the urge to buy these things right away. Get a few videos under your belt to see what’s lacking most. Most video production tools are universally compatible, making it easy to mix-and-match to suit your needs. But all of this should be secondary to your content. Don’t sweat the technicalities. The only way to get better is with practice. The best tools for the job are the ones you have on hand. The best time to start is now. And you don’t need a green screen. Happy vlogging! Tyler Gajda is a novelist, video producer and founder of Fourth Wall Creations, the YouTube channel hosting the web sitcom The Playgroup. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE 3. that it’s not, and later, after he is lifted and placed in an ambulance and rushed to the nearest emergency unit where, when you arrive, he lies on a gurney unable to recollect where he is, unable to recall when it is or make any sense of his situation, unable to lift his body or raise his head or press his feet against the doctor’s outstretched palm or move his left arm, and asks you if 4. he is dying, and you tell him no, that you’re certain the doctors will discover what is wrong, just wait, give them time to complete their tests and gather their results, but in the weeks and months that follow and after each subsequent test returns and shows damage to the brain but fails to reveal a cause, not catastrophic concussion, nor aneurism, not a stroke, a virus or infection or tumour and the doctors look perplexed, sad, vaguely embarrassed and quietly confess they don’t know what happened and you realize that
CLEM AND OLIVIER MARTINI
5. maybe he is, dying,
CLEM MARTINI
PARTNERS IN WRITING NO MORE one day you find your writing partner, in this case your brother, prone on the pavement having fallen, unable to rise 1. Writing with a partner is enjoyable in so many ways. It prompts increased productivity and makes the creative process feel much less lonely until 2. one day you find your writing partner, in this case your brother, prone on the pavement having fallen, unable to rise THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
and when a paramedic is summoned and the paramedic, having discovered that your brother suffers from schizophrenia, asks if it’s normal that your brother does not know his last name or where he is or the date of his birth and you reply no, 20
6. and really, you should have understood that something was up the time you and your brother flew to a writers’ festival on the west coast, and as usual he found everything about it fantastic, the other writers, the accommodations, the venue, the ocean, the weather, wonderful all wonderful, and he stuck limpet close to you as you made and then consumed meals that, let’s face it were pedestrian, how special is spaghetti bolognaise and tossed salad, but he found them phenomenal, and you sat up late nights chatting about long ago camping trips and rambles in the deep, wet forests of the west coast, and the pulp science fiction you both consumed when you were kids, but on the day when you both set out for the actual event, only a few short blocks away you noticed something was wrong, he began walking funny with tiny, quick strides on his tip toes like a dancer, and he was sweating and gasping and you suggested he stop and rest and he did, but he didn’t stop sweating, and as you continued to the venue he carried on in that odd manner (why was he walking
FEATURE
the wonderful part of writing with a partner is that they change you, they alter every part of you, the exceptional aspect of writing with a partner is that they compel you to think differently, make you view the world differently like that?), and required three more breaks, propped against fences, perched on park benches, before you finally arrived at the amphitheatre and he collapsed into a folding metal chair to sit and gasp for air, the two top buttons of the shirt he’d purchased specially for the event unbuttoned, and one of the festival organizers approached and quietly asked if he needed water and you replied yes, and looking at your brother drained of colour, you wondered what had happened was he having a stroke, and you asked him do you want to stop, should we call it off, should I call an ambulance, but he insisted no, in a croaky voice (and why was he talking like that?), no, no, I want to do this, he insisted, and he slugged down the water and then you were on—and you both proceeded to the podium and performed the reading, and suddenly he seemed great again, and when he received his standing ovation and an old friend of his in the audience raced down the concrete steps two at a time to embrace him, he said it was the happiest day of his life 7. and in that instant you understand what a gift it has been to write with him, a gift, because his creative process is so different to yours, anarchic, impulsive, deviled by his inner demons and at the same time abetted by demons, he doesn’t care about deadlines, and you wish a little that he cared more, and though you will ask him to provide a particular drawing, he will agree and then sketch something unrelated, but mostly he just enjoys working alongside you, and you recall the day when
you had hauled the manuscript, an immense stack of papers crammed into a portfolio, to your office, and laid out the pages for the graphic memoir Bitter Medicine alongside your brother’s renderings and portraits and cartoons, atop a long line of table tops, searching for the best ways to position each corresponding image with the correct accompanying written page, and you were concerned with getting the pairings right, and he just sat there sipping his coffee, occasionally pointing and saying that drawing with that page, but mostly just catching up, and you understand now that he was simply enjoying being with you 8. and you understand too that the process of storytelling with a collaborator is like moving from being a right-handed hitter on a baseball team to a switch-hitter because at once you possess fresh options and understand new things, aspects about him that you hadn’t understood before, how he sees the world, his drawings always so eloquent, the images he conjured dark and absurd, sometimes sweet, sometimes searing, challenging your perspective and, and merging the words and pictures together like performing an extended call-and-response song, or maybe like telepathically communicating back and forth through ink and graphite, he offered a different vision of everything, each image twisted sideways, each image simultaneously linking and shattering links, even images of yourself, discovering that in his drawings he often portrayed you as a smooth, gleamingly bald, intelligent, yet coolly dispassionate space alien, 21
which made you reconsider who you were and which in fact make you reconsider everything, reconsider everything, and once you have reconsidered everything there is no going back, no returning to what you were before, because 9. the wonderful part of writing with a partner is that they change you, they alter every part of you, the exceptional aspect of writing with a partner is that they compel you to think differently, make you view the world differently and the trouble with writing with a partner is 10. how do you let go of what you had, and how do you complete the projects you’ve already committed to in your heart, the next article, the next book, the flipbook, the chapbook, the book tour you had promised you would complete together, and what do you do when you can’t offer him coffee anymore, and smooth his wrinkled drawings flat against the written pages as he, seated comfortably, carries on careless to what you are supposed to achieve, recollecting when you were younger and musing whether Isaac Asimov was a more influential writer than Ray Bradbury, and how do you sustain that close connection, that easy familiarity, that intimate sense of knowing and being known, the trouble with working with a partner, the trouble if you want to know, is what to do when it’s 11. over.
ILLUSTRATION OF THE MARTINI BROTHERS BY OLIVIER MARTINI
Clem Martini is a writer, playwright and screenwriter who has created three books with his brother, Olivier Martini. He teaches at the University of Calgary. APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
RICK LAUBER
REQUESTING—AND RECEIVING—REVIEWS Tips for best practices RICK LAUBER
“This blog written by Rick Lauber really hit home for me. There were many times I was teetering between compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout when I was the primary caregiver for my fatherin-law. It is so important to recognize the signs of both and set aside time for self-care.”
Not everybody will provide you feedback. Clients who have thanked or complimented you as you worked through a project are better prospects as reviewers.
— Vincent Ehrenberg
U
nexpected written reviews from clients you have done freelance writing for, like the one above, can trickle in and acknowledge that what has been written was informative and valuable. They can be gratifying to receive and help to influence new clients. All fine and good, but writers can’t always count on others to volunteer feedback. Instead, they must often ask—a potential problem for introverted writers who may balk at reaching out or not understand the best practices. If you are struggling with asking for a client’s feedback, here are tips to get the important comments you want and deserve.
BE SELECTIVE Not everybody will provide you feedback. Clients who have thanked or complimented you as you worked through a project are better prospects as reviewers. If you’re feeling confident that they could supply reviews, approach your clients sooner rather than later. Strike while the iron is hot and ask for a testimonial when you invoice them. THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
BE PERSONAL
ASK QUESTIONS
Dashing off an email request may be quick and easy, but mailing a handwritten card is more appreciated. Browse your local gift shop for boxed blank cards to keep on hand so you won’t be caught short. Thank your client for the work in your card, and refer to a specific moment, project phase, or lesson learned that was most noteworthy for you. Slip your business card into the thank you card to show your availability for further work.
You don’t have to be a professional writer to experience writer’s block. There’s a chance your client will open a Word document, stare at a blank page, and wonder what to write in a review. By asking specific questions, you can help a client provide answers (and better direct him or her to share what can best help you). Sample questions are, “What were your expectations and outcomes of working with me?” “How did I help you achieve your business goal(s)?” “On a scale of 1–5, how satisfied are you with my work?” and “Would you hire me again?” These are all valid questions. If a reviewer doesn’t sing your praises, treat this as a learning opportunity and ask for advice on how to improve.
FOLLOW-UP Have you ever had too much on your desk to do? We all get busy, and a review request can become low-priority or be forgotten. Be prepared to check back with your client. Respect the fine line with following-up…pleasant emails are appreciated reminders while persistent emails are annoying. Remember, your client is not obligated to deliver. 22
CONSIDER OTHER TYPES OF REVIEWS Further to asking specific questions, you can make things easier for your client in different ways, as well. As any writer
FEATURE receiving a review in return. Consider colleagues too, for example, have you worked with another freelancer (writer, editor or graphic designer)? Can you trade reviews for mutual benefit?
will understand and appreciate, it can take time to pen carefully chosen words to paper. One suggestion is to purchase a small video camera (hints on what to buy are found online at whatcamcorders. com/buy-a-professional-video-camera/), record audio testimonials from your client and post these on your website, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. (Editor’s note: For tips on video cameras and audio, check out Tyler Gajda's article “So, You’ve Decided to Start a Vlog,” which appears on page 19.)
Asking for feedback displays your genuine interest in how you’ve done and can help you in your writing career. Your clients may be pleased to share their opinions of you and your work. Don’t be shy to ask for comments—this gets easier the more times you do it.
When you receive reviews, scan and save them to your computer. These are extra steps, but you will have these letters available to email or print off when needed. Another personal benefit to keeping your reviews handy is you can reread them. I find doing so makes for wonderful encouragement and motivation when I’m facing writer’s block.
EXCHANGE REVIEWS
Resource The Prairies Book Review
theprairiesbookreview.com/?gclid=EAIaIQob
ChMIn7TYvNy17gIVlDizAB2IggOjEAMY AyAAEgL7pPD_BwE)
Published book authors have another route for reviews. Online services, for example The Prairies Book Review, offer book reviews for a price. If pursuing this option, ask about review length, delivery time, publication, posting destinations and any “extras.”
If you’ve written a book, reach out to another published author to review it. I’ve found positive results after meeting another author through Amazon, trading books, providing a review for him, and
Rick Lauber is a freelance writer and the author of two guidebooks on caregiving (Caregiver’s Guide for Canadians and The Successful Caregiver’s
Guide). For more information, visit ricklauber.com.
JOIN US May 7th - 9th, 2021
filling Station issue 75 is on newstands. Read the best in experimental poetry, prose, non-fiction, and artwork. Visit fillingstation.ca to subscribe or submit your work.
ISSUE
——
Virtual if mandated by health regulations please check the website for details
Prestige Harbourfront Resort Salmon Arm, BC Whatever level of writer you may be, you’ll want to be part of this inspiring weekend on the shores of spectacular Shuswap Lake
75
Presenters: Faye Arcand Arianna Dagnino Sarah de Leeuw kc dyer Scott Fitzgerald Gray Blu & Kelly Hopkins Richard Kemick David A. Poulsen Linda Rogers Michael Slade Sylvia Taylor Karen Lee White Check website for updates
Expect to be encouraged, informed and thoroughly entertained.
on the
Lake
Writers’ Festival
Find out what these published authors and industry professionals can do for you. Register at: www.wordonthelakewritersfestival.com #wolwriters
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APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
ELLEN KARTZ
KEMOSA SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS ANNOUNCED Scholarship winners announced for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers Who Write
The Writers’ Guild of Alberta and Nhung Tran-Davies are pleased to announce the winners of the 4th Annual Kemosa Scholarship for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers Who Write.
F
irst established in 2017 by Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies in partnership with Tlicho Dene author Richard Van Camp, the Kemosa Scholarship offers an opportunity for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers to obtain resources to complete the work on their writing—whether that be a novel, a collection of stories, poems, or whatever form their writing might take. This year, there were many amazing entries for the Kemosa Scholarship, and it was a challenge for the judges to choose the winners from among them. After much thought and careful deliberation, here are this year’s recipients:
First PLACE ($3,000): Sierra Roberts Second PLACE ($2,000): Teresa Jane Wouters Third PLACE ($1,000): Holly Gerlach Honourable MENTION: Melissa Caillou MEET THE WINNERS SIERRA ROBERTS First Place Sierra Roberts is from amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) Treaty 6 territory and is Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and nehiyâw/Métis. She is currently a student in Child and Youth Care and is hoping that once graduated from the diploma program she will work with Indigenous youth. Pre-COVID-19
THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
24
FEATURE Edmonton (amiskwacîwâskahikan). She acknowledges the land that her ancestors lived on and acknowledges her ancestral background from the Papaschase Band, Treaty 6 Territory.
was spent in cultural events, taking time with the land to gain inspiration and spending much time with family and friends. Sierra has always been invested in her poetry writing for years, often writing to heal and to share stories she learned from elders and from her own personal life.
HOLLY GERLACH Third Place
TERESA JANE WOUTERS Second Place An Albertan gal with a mixed ancestry of Cree, Blackfoot, Scottish and French (and a splash of German and English), Teresa Wouters spends her time as a teacher, author, musician, actress, and entrepreneur (even though she can never spell that word without spellcheck). A former UBC graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing, she has over a dozen essays, poems, flash fiction, and short stories published in places like Prairie Fire, Bricks Books, The Waggle, and CBC radio. As well, she is an award-winning playwright and writes for television. Teresa encourages writers to get involved with the writers’ community through the WGA, writers’ groups, writers’ events and conferences. She is a lazy blog writer with three blogs: Chi Living, Teresa Wouters: A Writers’ Journey, and The Perfect Bitch. Under construction are her two author websites. One will be as a children’s writer with the author name Mz. Wowzers. Teresa invites you to connect with her, under both author names, via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Holly Gerlach is a Canadianbased writer, certified fitness trainer, inspirational speaker, and rare illness survivor. She is also the face behind Holly After GBS, a social media platform she uses to connect with other illness survivors around the world. She is currently at work on her memoir about turning her medical horror into a crusade of helping others. It’s Holly’s passion to raise awareness of the rare and devastation condition called GBS (Guillain-Barré syndrome) that forever changed her life. Her story of overcoming paralysis inspires us not only to overcome any obstacle we face, but to also push ourselves for MORE.
Her passion is to write and create stories that Indigenous/Non-Indigenous people can help educate and better understand the world view of a First Nations person. Stories that are yet to be told and shared amongst all human life. She loves her language, she encourages youth to learn the Nehiyowak way of life, to understand their true self.
Our Gratitude Thank you to each of the following for your generous donations to this year’s Kemosa Scholarship: • Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies • Jeananne Kathol Kirwin • Carol Holmes • Shari Narine • Philip Vernon We would also like to thank Van Camp and Jacqueline Guest, an Alberta Métis writer who lives in a log cabin nestled in the pinewoods of the Rocky Mountain foothills. Finally, we wish to thank everyone who submitted their writing to this year’s Kemosa Scholarship. Thank you for your beautiful words and stories, and we hope that all of you will continue to write and give voice to the stories and poems that you have to tell. For more information or media inquiries, please contact the Writers’ Guild of Alberta at mail@writersguild.ab.ca.
MELISSA CAILLOU
Honourable Mention Melissa Calliou, from the Sucker Creek F.N, Treaty 8 Territory, is an emerging filmmaker/writer/artist who resides in 25
APRIL – JUNE 2021
FEATURE
DOROTHY BENTLEY
RE/ORIENTATION Connect and learn at the WGA conference 2021
W
HAT IS THE THEME OF THIS YEAR’S CONFERENCE, AND HOW DID IT EVOLVE?
The theme of the conference is “Re/Orientation.” The vision grew from the idea that a writer wakes up in this present world and tries to find their bearings in a strange landscape. Where do we go from here? As writers, how is the world changing, and how will it be different in the future? A wonderful lineup of presenters will discuss this theme from different angles.
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS CONFERENCE? The Writers’ Guild of Alberta (WGA) 2021 conference is special for many reasons. It will be offered through live sessions and sessions posted online, where people can engage in conference offerings. The conference is presented in partnership with the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society (AWCS). Both the WGA and the AWCS are celebrating 40 years serving Alberta writers. To mark the occasion, the organizations will send fun swag to registrants.
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES AND BENEFITS OF AN ONLINE CONFERENCE? Conference planners talked about what kind of experience we want it to be, and how do we achieve that? The WGA conducted a study to identify how people use technology and how we can make our offerings more accessible across the province. There are tech requirements that will be unique to this conference, but going online removes THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
some limitations, for example, the need for participants and presenters to travel, getting people to and from the airport and booking hotel rooms for out-of-town speakers. The conference will be bigger this year than in the past because we don’t have those limitations and expenses.
WHAT CAN PEOPLE EXPECT FROM THEIR CONFERENCE EXPERIENCE? The conference’s main two features I want to emphasize are “connect” and “learn.” The best part is everyone can take part if they have a device such as a cell phone or computer with an internet connection. The conference is divided into three sections: pre-conference, main conference and post-conference. We will have preconference learning with five Blue Pencil editors, so up to 25 participants may submit writing samples to each editor a week before the conference. A new platform called Discord, which has a free version, is where we can connect with others to discuss writing and the conference sessions in May. The main conference sessions will be live as usual, but through a device. Keep in mind that watching a session does not mean having to sit still. To avoid online fatigue, I encourage people to move around or alternate between sitting and standing while listening. The schedule is as wide as it is long, so participants will have to prioritize which sessions to engage with live. Most sessions will allow participants to connect through the Q and A portion; plus, there will be social opportunities through Connection Cafés, virtual Happy Hour and Discord, where registrants can meet 26
and visit with other writers. For those who register, recordings of the conference sessions will be available afterwards during the postconference phase, so they can take in the sessions they missed. The post-conference phase will offer the chance to attend debrief sessions virtually. Just as we might have gathered in the past with a writers’ group to discuss a conference we’ve attended; these debrief sessions will provide opportunities for writers to process what they have learned and give feedback on the experience.
WHO ARE THE HEADLINERS? The AWCS brings to us Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, in conversation with Samantha Warwick, and a full-day masterclass on avoiding the predictable when writing fiction. We are fortunate to secure Giller Prize winner Souvankham Thammavongsa’s participation. The author of How To Pronounce Knife, in her keynote “The Drop,” will discuss the reader orienting to the story. Writers’ Trust winner Gil Adamson, the author of Ridgerunner, will provide insight into how to use artifacts to plot your course; and Eden Robinson, the author of the Trickster series, which found success and went to film, will be interviewed by Aritha van Herk. Natalie Jenner, who penned The Jane Austen Society, one of CBC’s top 20 of 2020, taps into relationship narratives in conversation with Katherine Koller, and broadcaster and novelist Jen Sookfong Lee will teach a workshop on writing across genre. There is something for everyone. We considered how to help Alberta authors develop their potential by providing professional development opportunities and chances to connect with writers from elsewhere. Alberta’s own thriller writer, P.J. Vernon, the author of Bath Haus, is sure to mess with minds. Naomi Lewis, the author of Tiny Lights for Travellers, will teach on memoir, and Joshua Whitehead will present on speculative fiction. Other highlights are a poetry stream, the graphic novel with Jared Tailfeathers and a session on writing for film. I invite you to register soon to connect and learn. See you online in the sessions and the connection opportunities. For more information or to register, visit writersguild.ca/ wga-annual-conference-2021-re-orientation.
PROFILE
MEET YOUR POETS LAUREATE
Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate
LOUISE BERNICE HALFE JOHN LAGIMODIERE PHOTO FROM SCLIBRARY.CA
Calgary Poet Laureate
NATALIE MEISNER
PHOTO FROM WRITERS' TRUST CANADA
The following article is reprinted with permission of Eagle Feather News, eaglefeathernews.com.
L
ouise Bernice Halfe has been named Canada’s next Parliamentary Poet Laureate. The appointment tops a distinguished career that many writers could only dream of.
stature as that of the novel,” said Halfe in a statement. “It is a privilege to bring the First Peoples’ voices and stories, poetry and whatever genre they are bringing to life to the forefront. Thank you for this gift.”
Raised on Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta, and a survivor of Blue Quills Residential School, she previously served as Saskatchewan’s second poet laureate. Her ability to weave the Cree language and teachings into her works has set her apart from many. Her books, Bear Bones and Feathers (1994), Blue Marrow (2004), The Crooked Good (2007) and Burning In This Midnight Dream (2016), have all received numerous accolades and awards. Sôhkêyihta features selected poems and was published in 2018. Her latest work, awâsis—kinky and disheveled, will be released in the spring of 2021.
The position of Parliamentary Poet Laureate was created in 2001 to build awareness of the reading and writing of poetry. Halfe won’t just be sitting around and banging off random poetry. Her work will include a range of duties, including composing poetry, particularly for use in Parliament on important occasions; sponsoring poetry readings; advising the Parliamentary Librarian on the Library’s collection, and performing related duties at the request of the Speaker of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Commons, or the Parliamentary Librarian.
Halfe was chosen from a short list of esteemed candidates and is the first Indigenous appointee. And she was gracious in her acceptance of the position. “kinanâskomitinâwâw kahkiyaw, âsay mîna kiyânaw ê-nîkânohtêyahk ôta kîkinaw askiy. I am deeply honoured and humbled to serve the people from coast to coast to coast. My dream is that poetry will be given the same
“Louise Bernice Halfe—Sky Dancer is an accomplished writer who has contributed significantly to Canada’s poetry community through reflections on her Indigenous experience,” said Hon. George J. Furey, Speaker of the Senate of Canada in a statement. “As the ninth Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Ms. Halfe will continue to promote the diversity of voices heard across our country.” 27
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atalie Meisner is a multi-genre awardwinning writer who grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and has been based in Calgary since 2000. She began her career as a writer in the spoken word and indie theatre scene in Halifax, has had plays produced across the country, and now writes and teaches literature and creative writing at Mount Royal University (MRU) where she also serves as director of changemaking, facilitating community and university arts-based projects in social justice and social innovation. Her new book of poetry, Baddie One Shoe (Frontenac), is a sequence of performance poems that pay homage to women renegades of the past who fight the power with laughter. Meisner’s ongoing career as a playwright and early experience as an actor inform her work and she is interested in the performative aspects of poetry and the power of comedy to build resilience. Meisner is a wife and mom to two boys, a social justice advocate, and believer in the power of the written word to change lives. Meisner holds a PhD in English, University of Calgary, an MFA in Creative Writing, University of British Columbia, and a BA in English, Dalhousie University. She taught at the University of Regina and the U of C. APRIL – JUNE 2021
PROFILE
MEET YOUR POETS LAUREATE
PHOTO FROM SCLIBRARY.CA
PHOTO FROM JULIA SORENSEN
PHOTO BY AL DIXON
City of Edmonton Poet Laureate
St. Albert Poet Laureate
Stony Plain Poet Laureate
NISHA PATEL
JULIA SORENSEN
LISA MULROONEY
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L
isha Patel is a queer spoken word poet and an award-winning IndoCanadian artist. She is the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion and Edmonton Slam Champion, and a recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award. She is also the Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. Patel is the former artist in residence at both The Sewing Machine Factory and The Nook Cafe. Patel has performed across Canada and the world, sharing her work on multiple tours and international features from Glasgow and Berlin to Seoul. She is published in two chapbooks, Water and Limited Success. Her poetry speaks to themes of race, feminism and identity, focusing strongly on her struggles and triumphs as a woman of colour. She strives to build strong relationships, mentorship and opportunities for artists around her, believing in the possibility and forgiveness of the Edmonton arts scene.
ntroducing Julia Sorensen, St. Albert’s Poet Laureate for 2020 through 2022.
A recent graduate of the University of Alberta with a BA in English and minors in Arts and Cultural Management and German, Sorensen is active in spoken word and poetry circles in St. Albert and Edmonton. She has performed her work throughout Alberta and beyond, including a performance at the Berlin Spoken Word Festival in 2019. Her written work has been published in Glass Buffalo, the 2017 Amplify Festival anthology and several chapbooks.
She is an alumnus of the University of Alberta School of Business with a Business Economics in Law degree, a minor in Political Science and Certificate in Leadership. Patel will serve a two-year term as Edmonton’s eighth Poet Laureate ( July 1, 2019–June 30, 2021). THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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isa Mulrooney is a poet and teacher from Redditch, England, who now lives and writes in Stony Plain, Alberta. She is the first poet laureate of Stony Plain (2019-2021) and is the president and co-founder of Parkland Poets’ Society. Mulrooney also serves on the board of Edmonton’s Stroll of Poets Society. Her poetry has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize (2019) and shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award in Poetry (2019). Mulrooney’s work has been published in numerous anthologies and featured in the online journal The Maynard (Spring 2019). She recently published Moments: An Assortment of Contemporary Haiku, as part of a poet laureate legacy project sponsored by the Town of Stony Plain.
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WESTWORD SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Guidelines for Writers
HOW TO SUBMIT AN ARTICLE
COPYRIGHT AND PAYMENT FOR ARTICLES PUBLISHED
• Send your article by email to editor@writersguild.ab.ca with the subject: “WestWord Article.” • Please use Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-space and paginate your document. • Name your file as “[Surname]—[Title]” (for example: “Smith—Untitled”). • Attach your submission as .doc or .docx files. • We suggest your article be between 800 and 1,450 words in length.
• We buy first Canadian serial print rights and limited, non-exclusive digital rights; copyright reverts to the author after publication. • Publication occurs within a year of acceptance. • WestWord believes writers should be compensated fairly for their work and pays industry rates for articles.
HOW TO SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR Letters to the editor are welcomed to encourage an exchange of ideas and opinions among members. • Email enquiries to editor@writersguild.ab.ca with the subject: “WestWord Letter to the Editor.” • The body of your email should contain your name and contact information.
HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL In addition to commissioned articles, WestWord welcomes unsolicited submissions. • Your proposal should express concisely and coherently the article’s essential elements; how you intend to approach the article; the section of the magazine best suited to the idea; and a summary of your credentials (no CVs please). • Email enquiries to editor@writersguild.ab.ca with the subject: “WestWord Article Proposal.” • The body of your email should contain your name, contact information, brief biography and outline of your proposal. • WestWord has a small staff. The response time to all proposals will vary.
MEMBER NEWS SUBMISSIONS Writers’ Guild of Alberta members in good standing may submit announcements about book publications, awards won, or other news about their writing life to the Member News section of WestWord. Submit news via email to mail@writersguild.ca. Questions? Email editor@writersguild.ab.ca
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APRIL – JUNE 2021
THE COMMUNITY
MEMBER NEWS The Writer’s Guild of Alberta invites members to submit news about their recent publications. Please keep submissions brief—up to 150 words. Content may be edited to conform to WestWord style. Adriana A. Davies announces the release of her newest work, From Sojourners to Citizens: Alberta’s Italian History (Guernica Editions, Spring 2021). The book brings to life the untold story of Italian immigrants in Alberta from the 1880s to the present. It places them in the narrative of province building from work on railways, mines and other industries to breaking the land for agriculture. Oral history excerpts allow the men, women and children to speak for themselves. What emerges is an unquenchable desire to make good, and overcome intolerable working conditions and discrimination, culminating with enemy alien designation and internment during the Second World War. Davies’s accomplishments include From Realism to Abstraction: The Art of J. B. Taylor (2014); The Rise and Fall of Emilio Picariello (2016); and the anthology The Frontier of Patriotism: Alberta and the First World War (2016). Dolly Dennis’ second book, The Complex Arms, released in May 2020 by Toronto’s Dundurn Publishing, received its official launch digitally September 3, 2020, through the Writer’s Guild of Alberta online reading series. A fictionalized account of the tragedy that erupted in the Black Friday tornado of July 31,1987, which tore through Edmonton killing 27 people, Alberta Views noted “some of the novel’s best writing shines in the description of this cataclysmic event.” On September 27, 2020, Dennis read and participated in a panel discussion with THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
Canadian author Cordelia Strube, moderated by Deborah Dundas, book reviewer for the Toronto Star, at the Word on the Street Toronto Festival, Harbourfront Centre. Both streams can be viewed on YouTube. CBC Radio Edmonton A.M. conducted a morning interview on September 25, 2020. The book is a remembrance of Black Friday and is available at the usual outlets. Joan Marie Galat had three books released in 2020. Absolute Expert: Space (National Geographic Kids/ ages 8–12) explains all things space, from our solar system to worlds far beyond our galaxy. The book includes astronomers’ and other scientists’ amazing work and information on new discoveries and the latest technologies. Young readers will enjoy fun activities and sky-watching tips. Stars (Scholastic/ ages 7–10) explores stars, from supergiants and white dwarfs to supernovas and black holes. It includes an activity, timeline and stunning NASA images. The Story of Malala Yousafzai—A Biography Book For Young Readers (Rockridge Press/ages 6–8) tells the story of Malala Yousafzai. When Malala was told girls could no longer go to school in Pakistan, she stood up for equal rights and became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Please visit joangalat.com for details. Christie Mawer is thrilled to announce her first novel. Serial Love is the first book of the Bad Kitty Untethered trilogy. Kathy didn’t know what good sex was. When her husband announced he “didn't want to be married anymore,” it was the greatest gift 30
of her life. Her seemingly prudish friend, Barb, introduces Kathy to the swing, polyamorous lifestyle. Her eyes now open to her true sexuality, she discovers great partners in a sexy cop, her not-so-prudish friend, an attentive truck driver and more. She discovers who she is at a deeper level. All the while, a serial killer is moving closer to his next victim. How will Kathy, the Bad Kitty, manage her new life and this shadow over her? Available in three formats. For more information, go to thebadkitty.com. George Melnyk has edited an anthology of COVID-19 poems by 75 Canadian poets titled We Are One: Poems from the Pandemic published by Bayeux Arts (Calgary). The collection includes over 20 poets from Alberta, including WGA members. The poems were written during the first wave in the spring and summer of 2020. The themes are family, nature, distancing, quarantine, isolation, grief, resilience, love and laughter. The anthology captures a full range of the pandemic experience from shopping to being alone. It draws on both famous and new poets’ work to memorialize the difficult times through which we have lived. The book is available through your local independent bookseller or from the editor at georgemelny75@gmail.com. Midnight stopped! She felt something she hadn’t felt in 3,000 years, something that possessed magic, to the east in the mountains. She ran toward the beacon. Midnight stood in front of a sheer stone wall hundreds of feet tall. A cave, three-quarters of the way up, was where the magic was. If she tried to
THE COMMUNITY
Welcome to Our
reach whatever was up there, it would kill her. Midnight was exiled to Earth from Orighen along with six Sorcerers, her friends, by the evil Sorcerers Tay’Ron. She had one more gift to give. She had already given the gift to five other people. After giving each one away, she felt a loss, weaker, and knew that her time would run out after she gave the last one away. Sorcerers Reborn, by Rick (Richard B.) Ogle, is Book One in a series that begins on Earth and takes you on an exciting journey to the world of sorcerers, dragons, elves. Available at richardbees.ca/marketing/ sorcersmarket.html - 1. There is nothing more impressive than seeing a human showing their love toward their pet and that pet returning that love, but much more so… tenfold more! The Adventures of Emma, Ellen, Emil and I; and Oh Yes, Marco is a labour of love by Molly Anne Warring. It follows her life since she was a small child growing up on a poor farm in the late 1930s. Particularly interesting is how her pets interacted with her to make her life a blessing on earth. It tells you about the horses, calves and her pet hens, Pricilla and Bernice. However, the story focuses on her pets of the last few years: Ellen, her 17-yearold Calico cat, and her two grey male cats, Emil and Marko. The story explains her belief in the Rainbow Bridge and the loving pets waiting for when she passes to the other side. This is Warring’s fourth book. Her first three were Paradise Acres, Lost Paradise and Return to Paradise. All three were nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her latest book is available in Edmonton at Audreys Bookstore, Uncle Ed’s Restaurant & Stawnichy’s. Tell us about your recent publications. Send your notice to Ellen Kartz at the Writers’ Guild of Alberta– ellen.kartz@writersguild.ab.ca
NEW WGA MEMBERS Adetola Adedipe, Calgary
Channie Laird, Calgary
Zetta Anderson, Edmonton
Kyle Levesque, Edmonton
Cynthia Arku, Edmonton
Arlene Logan, Grande Prairie
Jeremy Ash, Calgary
Jasleen Mahil, Edmonton
Natasha Backs, Calgary
Emilie Maine, Calgary
James Ballard, Edmonton Megan Barron, Edmonton Heather Barth, Cochrane Alice Bateman, Rimbey Kelly Beeusaert, Edmonton Barbara Bickel, Calgary Danilo Borja, Calgary
Madyson Matthews, Edmonton Leane Mattson, Sherwood Park Julie McNamara, Brooks Lindsey McNeil, Grande Prairie Arash Minhas, Calgary Cory Morlidge, Calgary
Lenard Calon, Heisler
Zahra Nanji, Calgary
Carrie Cameron, Sylvan Lake
Anna Navarro, Calgary
Sara Campos-Silvius, Edmonton
Joan Nord, Beaumont
Lynda Celentano, St. Albert
Courage Nyathi, Vernon
Mary Lynn Cloghesy, Calgary
Rose-Marie Nyberg, Lethbridge
Jessica Coles, Edmonton
Logan Pollon, Calgary
Jennifer Cook, Calgary
Gabrielle Pyska, Calgary
Allan Cooper, Calgary
Omar Ramadan, Edmonton
Shayne Dahl, Lethbridge
Skylar Ridderhof, Lacombe
Ojinika Ezeuko, Edmonton Bryna Figursky, Lacombe Christopher Gordon, Lacombe Travis Grant, St. Albert Laveryne Green, Red Deer Fahim Hassan, Edmonton Dara Hoffman, Edmonton
Cynthia Roebuck, Calgary Kyley Rumohr, Red Deer Nadine Sebetlela, Ponoka Onyx Shelton, Calgary Christopher Smith, Edmonton Jessica Strachan, Westerose
David Holehouse, Sherwood Park
Wayne Varga, Devon
Rick Jantz, Red Deer
Meghan Ward, Banff
Candice Jones, Lacombe
Brooke Weber, Castor
Nancy Kardash, Edmonton
David Westwood, Red Deer
Sandy Krausnick, Calgary
Shayla Wilson, Lacombe
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APRIL – JUNE 2021
THE COMMUNITY
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DONORS & SPONSORS FRIENDS (UP TO $99) Paula Abel Diane Armstrong Natasha Backs James Ballard Shirley Black Eric Bryer Jean Buchanan Eleanor Byers Susan Carpenter Lorraine Cathro Judith Clark Pamela Clark Katalin Condron Jean Crozier Nicola Dahlin Mary de Zwart Dolly Dennis Ruth DyckFehderau Beth Everest Cheryl Foggo Susan Glasier Jamie Gould Nora Gould Mary Graham Janelle Grue Jacqueline Guest Brenda Gunn Richard Harrison Laurie Hodges Humble Faye Holt Hazel Hutchins
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THE WRITERS’ GUILD OF ALBERTA
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SUSTAINING PATRON ($100 - $499) Kerry Abel Ann Campbell Canadian Literature Centre Joan Crate Roger Davis Douglas & McIntyre EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Edmonton Poetry Festival Raymond Gariepy Leslie Greentree Trudy Grienauer Lori Hahnel Brian Hitchon Carol Holmes Barb Howard Bruce Hunter Ellen Kartz Angela Kubrik Dennis Lee Marilyn Letts Jodi MacAulay
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Alice Major Roman Markevich JoAnn McCaig David Orr Priority Printing Holly Quan RIO Kids’ Writing Club Lori D. Roadhouse Julie Sedivy Kathy Seifert Shirley Serviss Anne Sorbie Fred Stenson Deborah Sword West Elm Lori D. Wiseman Wordfest Young Alberta Book Society
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PATRON ($1,000 & UP) Alberta Views Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society Amber Webb-Bowerman Foundation ArtsVest Stephan V. Benediktson The John Patrick Gillese Fund at Edmonton Community Foundation Vivian Hansen Randy Henderson RBC Foundation Rosza Foundation Robert Stallworthy Nhung Tran-Davies Under the Arch Youth Foundation WGA Board of Directors