The Writing Room

Ever wonder where writers write, how they write and why, if their physical writing space is private – or if it’s mobile, the neighbourhood internet café or university library?

Here's the return of THE WRITING ROOM, a regular Blog feature profiling a QWF member’s writing space and writing process.
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CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN

Where Claire Writes

I am not particularly sensitive to space and my work room is functional rather than beautiful, with a shelf of books on one side and a window overlooking the garden on the other. It’s just off the kitchen, so I can stir soups for my sons on breaks.

I don’t need much to write, just a flat surface for my laptop. When my children were small I learned to concentrate, and I can now work just about anywhere, with all kinds of noise and activity around me. I usually use paper in the planning stages of a book or short story. You can see my fiction notebooks and most recent journals piled on the bookshelf. Dictionaries and style books fill the lower shelves because of my day job as a translator.

Two reproductions hang on the walls: a forest of back-lit trees by Emily Carr (which you can’t see) and the sleeping body of a girl with an upturned face (which you can). The sleeping girl is Marie-Thérèse Walter, who fell in love with Pablo Picasso when she was seventeen and inspired him to fill his canvasses with love and light. It’s a voluptuous, dreamy painting that I stare at when the words won’t come.

CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN is a Montreal fiction writer and translator whose novel, The Heart Specialist, was published this past spring:

As a young girl living in the late nineteenth century, Agnes White is drawn to the “wrong” things. Growing up, she finds herself fascinated by microscopes, dissections, and anatomy – hobbies that deem her unladylike. Yet despite the criticism of those around her, and the obstacles set in place preventing women from assuming traditional male roles, Agnes chooses to pursue her calling to become a doctor, even if it means taking on the illustrious medical establishment at McGill University. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Inspired by the life of Dr. Maude Abbot, The Heart Specialist is a testament to the power of will and perseverance. Agnes White is proof that in a world on the brink of change anything is possible.

For an excerpt, visit www.claireholdenrothman.com

Cormorant Books
www.cormorantbooks.com

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

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Idiocy: A Cultural History

by Patrick McDonagh

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“At times, Idiocy reads like the history of a natural disaster or the build-up to war: we know the story will lead somehow from the fool as a happy innocent to the segregation, sterilisation and demonisation of generations of people with cognitive disabilities, but McDonagh makes that process fascinating and complex. Far from being a niche history of limited interest, McDonagh's careful and eclectic scholarship makes the case for idiocy as a crucial subject for readers interested in literature, medicine, psychology, gender, family, property, inheritance, romanticism, rationality, sensation fiction, technology, institution-building, religion, crime and civil society.” THE (Times Higher Education)

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Liverpool University Press

www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk

Seeing as Patrick is such an expert on the subject, he was kind enough (or just plain foolish?) to put together an idiot’s guide to…idiocy!

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Idiocy
by Patrick McDonagh

1. You’re an idiot? Then you’re a private person, and not a public one who got to run the polis and all – at least, that’s what it meant in Greek. When the word came into English in the 12th or 13th century, it was used to single out knights who held land as “tenants” of the king but who didn’t seem up to managing their land and responsibilities. So they were declared idiots, and all their land and money was taken away from them. But you needed something to lose to be formally found an idiot. If you were a peasant (and who wasn’t?!?) you were pretty much an idiot anyway.

2. “Imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms,” at least as far as most men were concerned, said Jane Austen. If male “idiot” characters in novels and plays have no money, the women have no discretion. They’re always getting themselves in trouble with guys….

3. Maybe women are not as smart as men for bodily reasons – maybe their physiology itself was imbecilic! That was Bernard de Mandeville’s theory. Thanks to the “imbecility of the Contexture of Spirits in Women,” he wrote in 1711, “One Hours intense Thinking wastes the Spirits more in a Woman, than six in a Man.”

4. So what caused “idiocy”? American physician and activist Samuel Gridley Howe, who wrote On the Causes of Idiocy in the 1840s, figured he knew: “Where there was so much suffering there must have been sin.” And one of the big sins was – gasp! – masturbation. It was a “monster so hideous in mien, so disgusting in feature, altogether so beastly and loathsome, that, in very shame and cowardice, it hides its ugly head by day, and, vampyre-like, sucks the very life-blood from its victims by night.” Golly! His peers in the UK weren’t so convinced by the masturbation theory – at least, they didn’t talk about it much…

5. Fancy a drink? Oops – that’s another sin. Studying 359 “idiots,” Howe identified 99 as the children of confirmed drunkards – and, he notes, the parents of most of the others were probably boozers too. So, he figured, “directly and indirectly, alcohol is productive of a great proportion of the idiocy which now burdens the commonwealth.” Again, the Brits weren’t as convinced – but then they did like their pints.

6. All this worry about sin would eventually catch up to those Brits, too. The 1913 Mental Deficiency Act included ‘moral imbecility,’ the “drugs and sex and rock and roll” category. Too much drugs & sex & music-hall entertainment and you could find yourself being carted off to the asylum.

7. Whatever you do, don’t look! The ‘maternal impressions theory’ said that if a pregnant woman were frightened by something unusual, she might eventually give birth to another unusual something. As late as 1904, the American physician Martin Barr described a boy “born … with a thick growth of reddish hair on back and chest,” whose “mother, during pregnancy, was chased by a cow.” He had another example from his practice, too: “A woman three months pregnant attending a circus was much frightened by a ‘freak’ exhibited under the name of ‘What is it?’ Her child – an idiot girl – born at full term, presented a most extraordinary Calibanish appearance,” he wrote. Of course, being a modern scientist, Barr didn’t call these maternal impressions so much as a “latent neurosis” just waiting for a chance to show off.

8. When John Langdon Down was coming up with a name for a condition he had discovered in the early 1860s, he didn’t call it Down’s Syndrome. That name appeared in the 1960s. Down called it Mongolism because he thought that folks with this condition really were exhibiting an evolutionary regression to a lower-than-Anglo-Saxon form of human, the Mongol. Of course, he also identified Negroid, Malay, and Caucasoid idiots, but they didn’t catch on like the Mongols. Down used this finding to claim that all humans came from the same branch of primate ancestor, and thus it was wrong to enslave others – this was the monogenist argument, as opposed to the polygenist position that said, “Hmmm, these people seem to have evolved from different kinds of apes than those we came from. Maybe it’s OK to make them our slaves.” In reality, the condition, also known as Trisomy 21, is caused by an extra 21st chromosome.

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http://www.patrickmcdonagh.net/

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

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Kolkata Dreams
K. Gandhar Chakravarty

"There's something wistful in the pages, sometimes approaching a metaphorical diaspora of the spirit, and then suddenly there's a sharp magic that bends the light." Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry

This collection of travel poetry explores the idealization of India against the realities of its westernization from the eyes of a Canadian-born Indo-North American discovering his heritage for the first time. Through his Kolkata dreams, the poet seeks the balance between tradition and modernity, particularly in the context of globalization and twenty-first century culture clashes.

K. Gandhar Chakravarty at the First International Festival of Poetry of Resistance.

With Cuba's Poet Laureate Nancy Morejon.

K. Gandhar Chakravarty is a Montreal poet, musician and scholar. His poems have been published throughout the world and several have been translated into Bengali, his mother tongue. Gandhar’s band, Far From Shore (FFS), released their first first album, Wazo, in 2006. FFS’s music video for the bilingual love song, “Amané,” was nominated for a 2007 CraveFest music video award.

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8th House Publishing
www.8thhousepublishing.com

A taste of Montreal in Toronto

Two of my favorite Montreal authors will be reading in Toronto on Friday. So if you happen to be in Hogtown...

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

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In Batting on the Bosphorus, a hilarious and eccentric traveler’s tale, Scotsman Angus Bell leaves Montreal and sets off in his Škoda to discover a hidden cricketing world across central and Eastern Europe. From Estonia to Crimea, Bell learns that Slavs are playing the Englishman’s game.

Between games, Bell is pursued by the KGB, becomes embroiled in a drug bust on the Midnight Express and seeks emergency treatment from a Romanian dentist. His travel companions include a Guatemalan anarchist, a Ukrainian chicken and a tobacco farmer who played cricket and rugby for Rhodesia.

I recently had a chat with Angus where I wasn’t the only skirt!

A Ukranian chicken is among your travel companions in Batting on the Bosphorus. What was her name? Did she travel light? What was the nature of your relationship -- did she provide you with breakfast?
mmm I think her name was Nadya, which means 'hope.' I don't know the names of her twenty chicks. Nadya travelled inside a Hugo Boss bag, with her children in a shoe box. Our relationship was strictly professional. She was a chick in need of a ride; I had a Skoda.
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What's so surprising about Slavs playing the Englishman's game?
mmm Like syphilis, cricket spread around the world thanks to British soldiers, but Eastern Europe wasn't one of their hot spots. It's like finding hockey in Congo.
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What is a "beer-drinking, armchair wannabe?" Name names, please!
mmm Sounds like my old man.
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Canadian Club? (One-word response, please.)
mmm Ginger ale.
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Sortilege?
mmm Criminal.
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You said that back in Montreal you are "continuing to build the life of a MEDIA SLUT (without the cocaine)." Is chocolate the new cocaine?
mmm I think chocolate is older than cocaine. Cricket is the new crack – it is all consuming, tears families apart, makes it near impossible to hold a job and is financially ruinous.
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What does your Romanian dentist think about the chocolate addiction?
mmm She recommends a box before bed.

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The following is reprinted from Angus's fabulous website: www.angusjjbell.com
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A Scotsman in Quebec
by Angus Bell
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As a 23-year-old Scotsman, I can’t imagine there were many like me who migrated to Quebec at the start of winter with their cricket bat. I'm here because, while gardening in Romania last summer, I met Candy, a Quebecoise whose family owns a chocolate factory. After securing a one-year work visa at great expense, I pursued this dangerous woman to begin a new life in Montreal.
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The move has demanded adjustments on all sides. Two weeks ago, I noticed Candy’s mum reading the romance novel, Taming the Scotsman. Meanwhile, I've had to forsake wearing my kilt, for fear of losing a limb. In Scotland, it never dips below minus sixteen. Here, it takes me twenty minutes to dress up like a tartan ninja just to check the mailbox in the lobby. I see people going to the shop – sorry, store – on skis. In Canada, I walk down something called a sidewalk, not a pavement. When two inches of snow fall in Britain, the motorways become car parks and the headlines scream, “Country In Crisis!” In Montreal, people can lose their cars and cats until spring melt. When it began to thaw I found myself sweating at four degrees.
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When I say I’m going on a two-hour drive in the UK, people normally respond with, “Wow! Will you be stopping overnight? Do you need me to feed the cat?” But in this big continent, people drive an hour for cheaper petrol. I mean gas.
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When I think of the buildings in Europe, it seems they were fashioned in an era of dwarves. Till I came to Canada, I’d never seen anything the size of the CN Tower, let alone our refrigerator. It’s like the gateway to Narnia. And restaurant portions are calorific. I’m used to leaving restaurants in Scotland with hunger, not doggy bags.
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Candy and I have undergone transition in the home, too. She recently purchased an apartment on the Plateau, which smelled like old lady and 20 years' cigarettes. We spent a fortnight washing cat hair from the walls and painting over the pink. The next task was finding a flatmate. After turning down a family of four from Mexico, an illegal immigrant from Burundi, and being abandoned by a seven-foot German exiled from the US, we settled with Eriko, a Japanese student; female, non-smoker. Always safe.
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So, all in all, the transition has been a success, and as soon as Candy gets Taming the Scotsman off her mum, life might settle down a little bit.
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Batting on the Bosphorus:
A Liquor-Fueled Cricket Tour through Eastern Europe
by Angus Bell

Greystone Books

www.angusjjbell.com

Bloody, bloody words

Michael Blair and Louise Penny were among the QWF authors attending Bloody Words, the annual Canadian Mystery Conference held in Ottawa last week.

In addition to bloody matters, the conference explored other weighty issues. For example, the Ink vs Electron panel (above), moderated by our own Michael Blair, was about the very future of THE BOOK as we know it: Is the e-book the inevitable future? If so, what form will it take? Is the Kindle the equivalent of the clay tablet? What are the implications for writers, publishers, libraries, book stores, readers, collectors? How do authors sign an e-book? How will the industry deal with piracy?

From left to right: Michael Blair (writer), Rick Blechta (writer), Alex Brett (writer), Michael Murphy (librarian), Linda Wiken (writer and bookseller).

Several (mostly) Quebec English-language writers took a break at a local pub during the conference, pictured in the photo below. All are also members of Crime Writers of Canada, Quebec and Atlantic chapters. From left to right: Michael Whitehead, Louise Penny, NAT (Nancy) Grant, Patricia Flewwelling, Michael Blair, Pamela Callow, Kathy-Diane Leveille, and Anne Emery.

Michael Blair is one busy sleuth! In addition to trying to save the book industry, his fifth mystery was just published.

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Depth of Field, a Granville Island Mystery
Michael Blair

http://www.michaelblair.ca

“Blair is a polished storyteller, poised to take his place among the best in Canada today.” The Hamilton Spectator

Photographer Tom McCall’s only regret about accepting an assignment from the beautiful Anna Waverley to photograph her boat for a potential buyer is that he has double-booked himself and needs to hand the assignment over to his partner and best friend, Bobbi. En route to the assignment, Bobbi is brutally beaten and left for dead. As Bobbi lies in a coma, McCall searches for an explanation for the attack. Learning that Anna Waverley doesn’t actually own the boat she was supposedly interested in selling, and that the woman claiming to be Anna Waverley may have been an imposter, McCall believes he knows where to start his investigation.

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Depth of Field is the third in Michael's Granville Island Mysteries series. The first, If Looks Could Kill, was a finalist for the Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize and was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize.

Dundurn Press
dundurn.com

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

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The Pangborn Defence

by Norm Sibum

The Pangborn Defence marks a departure from Norm’s previous verse, and will be something of a surprise for those who have followed his career over the last thirty years. A suite of poems as letters to personages both real and imagined, there are political undertones to many rarely seen in Sibum’s ouevre. But there is still the same attention to detail, the same craftsmanship, humour, love and originality.

Biblioasis
biblioasis@biblioasis.com

On My Bookshelf Returns!

Launched in February, ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're currently reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.

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MATANA ROBERTS













Brooklyn based sound artist Matana (mah-tah-nah) Roberts is the creator of FAT RAGGED, a 'zine about her struggles as a performing artist. Matana recently taught a four-week ‘zine session in an after-school youth program in Montreal as part of the QWF’s Writers in the Community. A Saxophonist/ Improviser/Composer/21st Century Sound Conceptualist Griot, Matana is the recipient of national commissions, residencies and awards and has appeared as a leader and collaborator on recordings and performances in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

"here’s my top ten list of favourite zines. tho my faves change all the time as there is so much out there. here are my recent picks in no particular order.

1. Doris by Cindy Crabb
2. Cometbus by Aaron Elliot
3. Green Zine by Christy C Road
4. The Match by Fred Woodworth
5. I'm Johnny and I don't give a Fuck by Andy
6. My Evil Twin Sister by Amber Gayle and Stacey Forte
7. boxcutter by Jermey Useless
8. brainscan by Alex Wrekk
9. east village Inky by Ayun Halliday
10. Adventures in Menstruating by Cella Quint"

http://www.matanaroberts.com/

For more info on Writers in the Community, visit:
http://qwf.org/programs/wic

Check out Peggy Curran’s fabulous story on the program in The Gazette:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/News/journey+from+streetwise+sonnets/1607465/story.html

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

"Two Trails Narrow is many things at once: a heady adventure novel, a hell of a war story and a powerful condemnation of our country's brutal residential school system. Ultimately, McGregor's tale is gripping, honest and a super page-turner. An impressive Indigenous debut." Joseph Boyden, author of Through Black Spruce and Three Day Road

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Two Trails Narrow
Stephen McGregor
Theytus Books

http://www.theytus.com/

CONGRATULATIONS Ami!!!

The Canadian Jewish Book Awards were held in Toronto in May.
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Ami Sands Brodoff received the
2009 Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award in Fiction for
The White Space Between.

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From Ami’s acceptance speech:
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I wrote The White Space Between in honour of my mother-in-law, Brana Hochova, one of nine children from a Hasidic family in Slatinskidoly, a small town in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in Czechoslovakia. Brana was a survivor of three concentration camps and lost virtually all of her large family in the Shoah. Like many survivors, Brana chose not to speak about her experience during the Holocaust. Yet, after her death, she left behind a little cassette tape just for family in which she finally spoke about her life. I was struck by the power of voices, of stories, how they live on and possess enduring life behind corporeal life.

Though The White Space Between is not literally my mother-in-law’s story, it is written in honour of her, and in honour of our lost family and the millions of families like them.

Ami and fiction juror Cynthia Good,

Director, Creative Book Publishing Program, Humber College

http://amisandsbrodoff.com/

http://chez-ami.blogspot.com/

LAUNCHED THIS SPRING!

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In the Eye of the Wind:
A Travel Memoir of Prewar Japan

by Ron Baenninger and Martin Baenninger

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Yokohama, a quiet fishing village when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with his gunboat diplomacy in the mid-1800s, was quickly transformed into a bustling port for international trade. The change brought affluent foreigners to the city but also mobilized Japanese nationalist hostilities. It was in this setting that Ron and Martin Baenninger's Canadian mother and Swiss father met in 1933.

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Relying on Ron's early memories, their mother's diary, and the acute memory of their father, who lived to be over one hundred, the Baenningers recount the initial years of their parents' marriage and provide glimpses into relations between Japan and the West from the turn of the century to the onset of the Second World War.

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McGill Queen’s University Press

http://mqup.mcgill.ca/

QWF Writers Out Loud: June 4

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ANN CHARNEY reads from

Distantly Related to Freud

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Ellen, the young heroine of Ann Charney’s new novel, Distantly Related to Freud, is a woman after my own heart. She dreams of becoming a femme fatale. Her first opportunity comes when she boards a train for New York to visit her cousins:
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As soon as I was alone in the train compartment, out came the cache of makeup, which I applied carefully, as I’d practiced numerous times. No doubt about it, I thought, looking at myself in the small mirror over the sink: I definitely looked older. To enhance the effect, I pulled my hair into a French twist. Even better. The new hairdo added years to my appearance. Next I reached for my pièce de résistance – my inflatable bra. The bra’s operating mechanism was simple but tricky: you inserted a straw-like plastic reed into the small openings on the side of each cup and blew until you reached the desired size. To achieve symmetry took some time, but wearing the bra, I felt as powerful as Wonder Woman with her magic bracelets. As I headed for the dining car, I hummed the refrain from my favourite song that summer:

You’re no exception to the rule

I’m irresistible, you fool

Give in.

Sigh, give in, give in...

Ann reads from Distantly Related to Freud on Thursday:

June 4, 7:30pm

Eleanor London Côte Saint-Luc Public Library
5851 Cavendish Blvd.
Côte Saint-Luc

More info: 514-485-6900

Tickets: $3.00

ANN CHARNEY was born in Poland and raised in Montreal. She is a novelist, essayist, and journalist, who has an MA in French literature from McGill University and a license dès lettres from the Sorbonne in Paris. Her work has been published in Canada and the U.S., as well as in France, Germany and Italy. She has won two National Magazine Awards, the Chatelaine Fiction Prize, and the Canadian Authors’ Association Prize and has been named an officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters. Distantly Related to Freud (Cormorant, 2008) is her most recent book.

Host GUY RODGERS is Past President of Playwrights' Workshop Montreal (PWM) and was president of both FEWQ and QSPELL when they merged to become the Quebec Writers' Federation (QWF). In the late 80s he served as Executive Director of the newly created Quebec Drama Federation (QDF) and in the early 90s was appointed to the founding Board of le Conseil des Arts et des Letters du Québec (CALQ). He has also served on boards for le Conseil Québécois du Théâtre (CQT) and the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. In 2005 he received the Quebec Writers' Federation's Community Award for leadership in building communities among artists.

On My Bookshelf

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DOROTHY WILLIAMS
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nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn“I have a secret. I love dictionaries. I know you must think that is weird or strange but I just love them. I have always loved looking at words, mulling over their etymology and their sounds. Even as a kid I always thought of dictionaries and encyclopaedia as close friends. I didn’t smart either when my friends would sneer, “You are a walking dictionary.” Words are what books and life are about – at least I have always felt that way. I am deadly in a game of Scrabble, can play a mean game of Boggle and will try any crossword labelled ‘hard,’ ‘expert’ or ‘challenging.’

My dictionary collection numbers now in the hundreds. I have bilingual dictionaries, American, British, Canadian, foreign and specialized dictionaries about obscure subjects, crossword dictionaries and word lists of all types. In fact, the weirder and more obscure the list, the better! And if they are old, older than me, I am in seventh heaven.

I love to watch people’s faces when they walk into my home office. They scan a row of my books once, then twice. Their mouths drop open. Oooh, I caught them! I think the first thing they expect to see are books I have written, books about Blacks in Canada, or books on women, Canadian history or racism. Sure, I have these books in my collection, but not in the first two columns of my floor-to-ceiling shelves. No, they are very surprised to see dictionary after dictionary all lined up, together by height. Some even have little colourful, post-it-notes sticking out of them. Only the very inquisitive will actually ask me about those dictionaries with little slips of paper sticking out of them. If asked I would gladly reveal: Those notes are markers on entries for the word ‘nigger.’

Years ago, I fancied myself an amateur lexicographer and had even joined the Dictionary Society of America. I read books on the history of the OED and books on the early pioneers of English language dictionaries. I learned about their motivations and how they put together their word lists, but I was really interested in how they selected their entries. With over a million words in the language, I asked, “Why these words and not others?” “Why then have some words been dropped in subsequent editions?”

That enquiry was to solve another riddle. I wondered about the word ‘nigger’ – this is way before hip-hop’s appropriation. How had it been used? How did old dictionaries describe it? When did it enter mainstream dictionaries? Who would dare include the word ‘nigger’ without labelling it slang or offensive? I thought then that one day I would put together a couple of articles that married the science and craft of etymology with my personal (albeit, painful) relationship with the word.

Alas, as my writing took another turn and no articles were forthcoming I am content just to have my dictionary collection. It grows from visiting dusty second hand bookstores, braving the mobs at library book sales, and occasionally getting another one as a gift or even winning one in a contest or two.

So go ahead, just ask me about a word... .”

DR. DOROTHY W. WILLIAMS has penned numerous articles and is the author of the Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal (1997) and Blacks in Montreal 1628-1986: An Urban Demography (1989, 2009).