Categories
Festival

Photos from the 6th Annual Poetry Gabriola Festival

With the title of Malcolm Lowry’s posthumously published novel October Ferry To Gabriola in my head (even though it’s November) I boarded the ferry in Nanaimo to head over an check out the 6th Annual Poetry Gabriola Festival at the Surf Lodge. I had a great time, saw a few familiar faces and met a lot of new people. Artistic Director Hilary Peach and her crew are doing a great job with this island festival. I saw a great group performance, learned a little about haiku, heard an imromptu ukele and voice duet, was read to and listened to an amazing panel discussion.  The only downside was having to leave before Saturday’s evening events including an show featuring Christian Bök, Alexis O’Hara and Paul Dutton which would have been amazing I’m sure.

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Artwork  featured on the festival poster and program is by Sheila Norgate

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Festival Artistic Director (and performer) Hilary Peach

Gabfest3

Hilary Peach and Production Deputy/Publicist Kathy McIntyre contemplate the day ahead

Gabfest4

Members of the Easy Writers group practice the finale of their One Sweet Ride show

Gabfest5

The lighting director checks out the stage action

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Lunch in the Surf pub

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Antony Holland in the Surf pub, he was performing Sunday

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Christian Bök grabs a few moments of internet time in the Surf pub

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Books and Cd’s on sale

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Checking out the merchandise

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Introducing Winona Baker and Naomi Beth Waken for a presentation on Haiku and Tanka

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Hilary with volunteers

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An impromtu ukele and voice duet

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Festival photographer Victor Anthony shoots a portrait of poet Naomi Beth Wakan

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Poet and psychotherapist Drek Daa arrives at the Surf Lodge

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(L-R) Alexis o’Hara, Evalyn Parry, Sheila Norgate and Hilary Peach at the Self-Scripted Women event

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Poet K. Louise Vincent reads

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Vancouver Island poet and novelist Marilyn Bowering reads

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Montreal’s Alexis O’Hara sets up for her evening show with Christian Bök and Paul Dutton

Categories
Uncategorized

BC BookWorld Needs Your Help

A message from Alan Twigg, Publisher of BC BookWorld:

*The provincial government has suddenly rescinded ALL funding to /BC
BookWorld/, *the most-read publication about books in Canada.

Notice of this pre-Olympics decision to break a 22-year-old relationship
with the newspaper came from Andrea Henning, executive director of Arts
& Culture, during a brisk phone call, without any explanation or paper
trail, and with less than a month’s notice.

On the same day, the BC publishers’ association and the BC magazine
publishers’ association similarly learned all their funding had been
removed. To avoid more bloodletting, literary arts groups have formed
the /Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in B.C/.

You’re a writer, so by all means, write a letter to the Premier or your
MLA—or to us—if the spirit moves you, to protest these draconian
measures. But, more importantly, if you want *B.C. BookWorld* to serve
authors for another 22 years, become a Supporter / Subscriber. If you
are willing to spare the cost of two movie tickets, we can save /B.C.
BookWorld/ as a public institution that serves 100,000 readers
throughout the province, via more than 900 outlets.

It’s not charity. It’s a good deal. Send a cheque for $25 made out to
*PACIFIC BOOKWORLD NEWS SOCIETY, *and we’ll mail /B.C. BookWorld/ to
your home or office address throughout 2010. In essence, I am asking one
thousand authors to collectively replace Gordon Campbell’s government.

It’s a case of double jeopardy. If we’re not making the newspaper, it’s
unlikely my colleague David Lester and I will be able to maintain our
free reference site—for and about more than 9,000 B.C. authors—at
www.abcbookworld.com <http://www.abcbookworld.com/> (for which we have
never received a penny).

That’s the gist of the situation. It’s up to you. Show us that Gordon
Campbell made the wrong decision. Send your Supporter / Subscriber
cheque ($25) today to *PACIFIC BOOKWORLD NEWS SOCIETY, 3516 West 13th
Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6R 2S3. *

–Alan Twigg, Publisher

For info: Google the *Coalition for the Defence of Writing and
Publishing in British Columbia*. Or visit
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=148926547819

/Sent on behalf of Pacific BookWorld News Society; publisher Howard
White (president), historian Jean Barman, Simon Fraser University chief
librarian Lynn Copeland, Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing
director Rowland Lorimer, Association of Book Publishers of British
Columbia executive director Margaret Reynolds, author Andreas Schroeder,
bookseller Don Stewart and Vancouver Public Library chief librarian Paul
Whitney. In conjunction with the Coalition for the Defence of Writing
and Publishing in British Columbia./

Categories
Publisher's Announcement

The Great BC Novel or Novella Search

Do you have the great British Columbia novel or novella stored away on your hard drive. Mother Tongue Publishing is looking for submissions. It’ll cost you $35.00 and you do have to be a resident of the province. Short List judges are Kathy Page and Karen  X. Tulchinksy ( I’ve always thought it must be terribly cool to have X as your middle initial) and the final judge is the great Jack Hodgins.

See below for details.

The Search for The Great BC NOVEL or NOVELLA

Short List Judges: KATHY PAGE and KAREN X. TULCHINSKY
Final Judge: JACK HODGINS
Deadline: May 31, 2009
Entry fee – $35

GOAL: To inspire and encourage the growth and appetite for regionally based literary     fiction that arises from BC landscape, history, culture, language, vision and people.

GUIDELINES:
✒ Open to all writers living in British Columbia.
✒ Enter the 1st chapter ( max 30 pages) of your unpublished literary novel or novella set in British Columbia. The novel must have been completed.
✒ Include covering letter, summary (max 8 pages), short bio, name, address, ms title, phone number and email address. Ms must be double-spaced. Include SASE if you do not have email.
✒ Entries accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere are ineligible.
✒ No submissions accepted by email.
✒ No length restrictions.
✒No entries will be returned.
✒Winner and short list finalists will be notified by email (or SASE if provided). They must be able to provide full manuscript upon request.
✒ Submissions must be postmarked no later than May 31st, 2009. A short list will be announced      Fall 2009. The winning ms will be announced by December 2009.
✒Publication Fall 2010.
The winner will receive:
● A publishing contract with Mother Tongue Publishing.
● $1,000 advance.
● A regional book tour.
●Write-ups in local, regional and national papers.
●Publication of the winning novel in a beautiful trade paper edition.

Mail entries to: The Great BC Novel/Novella Search
Mother Tongue Publishing, 290 Fulford-Ganges Rd.
Salt Spring Island, BC V8K 2K6
Novella info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella

JUDGES –
Jack Hodgins lives on Vancouver Island where, until recently, he taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. His novels and story collections include: Spit Delaney’s Island, The Invention of the World, Innocent Cities, Broken Ground, Distance, and Damage Done by the Storm. A Passion for Narrative (a guide to writing fiction) is used in classrooms and writing groups across Canada and Australia. Hodgins’ fiction has won the Governor General’s Award, the Canada-Australia Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, amongst others. He has given readings, talks, or workshops in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and several European countries, and has taught an annual fiction workshop in Mallorca, Spain. He is the recipient of the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in British Columbia. www.jackhodgins.ca.
Kathy Page, who moved from the UK to BC in 2001, is the author of six novels including Alphabet short-listed for a Governor General’s award in 2005, The Story of My Face, long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and the recently reissued  Frankie Styne & the Silver Man. Her themes are loss, survival, and transformation: the alchemy by means of which a bad hand becomes a good chance. She is a prize-winning short-story writer as well as a novelist, has written for television and radio, and was a winner of The Traveller Writing Award. She has taught fiction writing at Universities in England, Finland, Estonia and Canada and held residencies in a variety of institutions and communities, including secondary schools, a fishing village and a men’s prison. www.KathyPage.info
Karen X. Tulchinsky lives in Vancouver and her novel, The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky, was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award and winner of The Vancouver Public Library’s ‘One Book One Vancouver 2008’. Tulchinsky’s screenplay adaptation of The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky is currently in development. Her first book, In Her Nature won the 1995 VanCity Book Prize. She is the author of Love Ruins Everything and its sequel, Love and Other Ruins. A graduate of the Canadian Film Centre, Karen is a writer on ‘The Guard’ for Global TV. She wrote an episode of ‘Robson Arms’ for CTV and co-wrote ‘Floored By Love’ for City TV’s series, ‘Stories About Love’. She is currently writing a new novel, The Shoemaker’s Daughter, set between 1941 and 1977 in Russia, Vancouver and Jerusalem. www.karenxtulchinsky.com

Info:submissions@mothertonguepublishing.com                www.mothertonguepublishing.com

Categories
Book Launch Reading

Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry – Reading/Launch

Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poets published by Mother Tongue Publishing had a launch and reading at Victoria’s Bolen Books. The anthology edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch contains poems from 108 contributors from British Columbia.

Posters, books and postcards for the launch.

Publisher and editor Mona Fertig performed MC duties

Kyeren Regehr reads.

Donna Kane reads

Derk Wynand reads

Peter Morin reads

Crowd listens to Maleea Acker

Marilyn Bowering reads

Patricia Young reads

Carla Funk stands, waiting for her turn, she was the final reader of the evening

Audience members follow along in their copies of Rocksalt

Categories
Book Bookstores Canadian Interview Reading

Patrick Blennerhassett – Monument – Interview

LP: Monument’s characters are heavy drinking, drug abusing, amoral, racist, violent, misogynist young men yet somehow the reader remains interested rather than simply repelled by the characters. Was this a challenge when writing the book?

PB: Definitely, I wanted people to be torn about cheering for Seth in particular. I wanted him to be an antihero, as my buddies and I always say, ‘a lovable asshole’. These guys are young, confused, stupid, immature, just like I was, and am still am a bit, it’s part of being young. But I think there’s hope for these guys, even though they seem like lost causes. They really didn’t go looking for trouble, like Seth, they just had the cards stacked against them from Day 1, and so life has made them frustrated and rebellious, and this is how they lash out back against that, by being assholes.

However I’m sure many people will read it and just straight up hate these guys and burn the book and curse me as a writer. To each his own I guess, I just hope people see past all the shocking elements and realize these guys are far from perfect, they’re human.

LP: The book ends somewhat ambiguously with the main character’s secret possibly to be revealed to another. Did you want readers to be left wondering or do you think they’ll write their own ending?

PB: I hope they write their own, but they don’t hate me for leaving it open. I think the book ends at one of the elbows in Seth’s life, and now he’s got another chance to make a choice, another chance at redemption. What happens after the final pages, I think, the reader must decide – me personally, I have my own future for him, but that’s the beauty of it, everyone will have a separate future for him, be it good or bad.

I like books that make you think past the final pages, and that also tie things together a bit in the end. I can’t stand a lot of books for that reason, they just kind of end, and you’re like ‘OK what was all that for? You did a great job at describing the characters and the setting, and then I get this for an ending.’ I always feel cheated so I wanted to avoid that.

LP: Hockey plays a big part in the book. The one commitment Seth lives up to is showing up for games, no matter what. Why that commitment to a game?

PB: Honestly hockey is one of the main reasons I’m still around today. I’ve been through some rough patches in my life, and you can always go out for a few hours a night and totally forget about all your problems on the ice, it’s total escapism. Seth is good at hockey, it’s really the only thing he’s good at, so he just naturally gravitates towards that as a bit of a bouy in turbulent waters. It’s the one place – the rink – where’s he’s in charge, where’s he good at something and feels respected.

LP: How much did you rely on personal past experiences in the book?

PB: Too much. Way too much. Pretty much every character including the main character is based directly on people I know personally. I don’t know if I will ever write a book this personal again, I didn’t expect a lot of the reactions I got from people, both positive and negative albeit. Every story, everything that happens throughout the book is taken directly from personal experience, or from a friend’s personal experience.

LP: This is your first novel. How long did it take to write it?

PB: Just over a year for the bulk of it, the majority of it was written during 10 months of sobriety, I decided to quite drinking for a year, although I only lasted 10 months, and I realized I couldn’t go out to the bar and hang out with my friends, it was impossible. So I was home alone a lot of nights and just kept writing, collecting stories along the same vein and then I just checked the word count one night and though ‘man I’ve got enough for a book here if I keep going’. So I kept going.

LP: The book’s main characters are all young. Do any of your friends who have read the book identify with any of them?

PB: All the guys in the book are based directly on friends of mine and guys I know. Some of them are simply composites, Cancer being a blend of my buddy Ryan mentally and another friend physically, and Caleb a blend of two other buddies. Some of the more minor hockey guys are basically real guys I know, with the names changed in most occurrences.

But yeah a few of my close friends have read it and they got it, they totally understood some of the themes I was trying to get across. For me that was the biggest compliment.

LP: The book is divided into chapters/books with individual titles. Why did you do this, what is the significance of the titles?

PB: It’s mostly to break it up, kind of like breathers for the reader. But each one was carefully picked, such as the car accident chapter, ‘Mercaptan’ is the additive they put in gasoline that gives it that distinct smell that Seth is comforted by right after the accident. Some are much more cryptic, not sure people will totally understand all of them, they’re also there to set a tone too for the forthcoming chapter.

LP: I found it interesting that you used brand names for many things rather than generic terms (ie instead of just noodles you use the full brand name, or a very specific brand of cigar rather than just a cigar). Why?

PB: I was drawing a lot from my own life, I have a penchant for Blackstone Cherry cigars, and so just to say ‘tipped cigar’ doesn’t really give the reader that definitive look. A lot of the references give the reader a bit of a sense of time, like the video game Cancer is obsessed with, GoldenEye, it lets the reader know we’re in the days of Nintendo 64, which I thought was a bit cooler than saying pre 9/11 or 1999-2000. It’s also not bowing down to corporate advertisements, but I hope I don’t get sued. Mind you that might be fun for me, not my publisher.

LP: This is a very much a BC book with events taking part in Vancouver and Kamloops. Is location important or could this book been set elsewhere?

PB: It’s definitely a B.C. book because that’s all I really know. I’m not good enough of writer to have set it in Manitoba or Detroit or just made up all the settings. Honestly when I first starting writing this I had no intention of publication, so for me it was just natural to blatantly place the characters in places like Kamloops and Vancouver because I was really just kind of reciting stories verbatim.

LP: The only books that any character in the novel go near are philosophy books that the main character studies, for school and in a bookstore. Do you think your novel would appeal to the type of characters who populate the novel?

PB: I hope so, other than myself, I really wrote it as a book my buddies might want to pick up and get something from, draw some parallels from. But yeah I honestly don’t care what critics or other writers say about it, I’m sure they’ll take their shots because it’s not a literary novel, the language is simple and it’s not a huge existential, flowery look into Canadiana, and I didn’t want it to be that at all. I just wanted it to be a good story. But my buddies, or regular guys who have lived this life, if they can pick it up and go ‘yeah, that’s all bang-on’ then that’s all I’m worried about.

LP: You work full time as a journalist. How does that writing affect your fiction writing?

PB: Too much maybe. It’s made me a simpler, more straightforward writer, but it also hampers creativity at times. I don’t think I could do both types of writing for a long time, I’d like to do the journalism on the side, rather than the fiction writing on the side, but fiction writing doesn’t pay the bills, so I can’t really do that. Mind you journalism doesn’t really pay the bills that well either, maybe I should just go into PR and call it a day.

LP: The book has been published by a very small press Now Or Never Publishing who gave you quite a bit of control/input over the book design. Did you enjoy that process or was it a distraction?

PB: I’d like to say it was enjoyable but it was a bit of a distraction too. I think in an ideal world a writer just wants to write, and leave the rest to everyone else. But I learned a lot about the business and am still learning. I learned the fiction game is a terrible bitch, excuse my language.

I got a lot of rejection letters before NON took the book, that’s one of the reasons I’m hesitant to write again, I don’t have enough confidence in my writing to go through that lovely rejection process and self-promotional aspect of it, it’s very draining when you’re a young writer without a lot of backing. You get told ‘no’ a million different ways, I’m still recovering from that.

LP: What’s next? Do you have another novel underway?

PB: No, no novel in me for awhile, this one was draining, and unless I stop drinking again I don’t think I’ll get that amount of time again. I have more than a few ideas for a book, but that’s way down the road in the future when I’m in the right head-space.

I have however finished a book of poetry and a movie script, but I’m hesitant to shop them around, I’ve had my fill of rejection for awhile. But I’m hoping maybe the book might open one or two doors down that road, but you never know. I’m playing it all by ear for now.

Patrick Blennerhassett’s first novel ‘Monument’ has just been published by Now Or Never Publishing.

Categories
British Columbia Canadian Interview Writer

Tim Bowling – Interview

LP: Your childhood, salmon fishing and a certain part of the lower mainland where you grew up play an integral role in most of your writing. Can you fill us in on that background?

TB: Re; my background: I was born in Vancouver and immediately taken under the Fraser (via the Deas Tunnel) to Ladner – a salmon-like little journey appropriate for someone who’d grow up to be so involved with that magical species. I had an idyllic childhood at the mouth of North America’s wildest river, a Huck Finn childhood of raftings and roamings, except, unlike Huck, I had loving and supportive parents! What can I say? I was very fortunate; children weren’t then supervised every second of the day, my family worked in the salmon fishery, and so I spent a lot of time on my own in the
outdoors. Everything I write comes out of the sense of awe I drank in daily
as a boy.

LP: When you finished high school you went away to university, got your degree, and then came back to the fishing industry for a fair number of years. Where and when did the urge to write begin?

TB: Re: the urge to write: It was always there. In grade one, I remember answering that infamous question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “A writer.” Why? Who knows?

LP: Did you leave fishing simply because it was a dying industry or did the writing take over as your primary focus?

TB: As much as I appreciated the work of salmon fishing, I was never entirely at ease in the culture. In fact, I was only an appendage to it, as my older brother, Rick, rented the boats and made the decisions. I got my hands wet and bloody, right enough, but the stresses were mostly his. All through the 80s, I was focussed on the apprentice work of the poet and novelist (ie, reading a lot and writing a lot, most of the latter material being bad, of course)

LP: You now live in Edmonton. How did you end up there?

TB: Long story. To be brief, I moved to be with the woman who is now my wife. Funny thing is, I have very deep roots in Edmonton – my great-grandparents moved here from Ontario in 1905 and my father was born here in 1923. I’m only now beginning to explore these roots in my work.

LP: Is it a challenge to maintain your ties, creatively, to the west coast while living on the prairies?

TB: No challenge at all. But perhaps that’s because I visit the coast at least twice a year (for several weeks at a time) to see my family. In any case, Edmonton, like my hometown, has a river running through it. That helps.

LP: You have written poems and a novel set in Alberta but, if anything your Alberta focus seems more on the Badlands area rather than Edmonton. Why, what appeals about an area that is so different from your west coast home?

TB: The badlands reminded me very much of the west coast circa 1970 because of all the darkness and silence (the title of my poetry collection that contains several badlands poems). I’d sit on the porch at night in the Red Deer River Valley and feel that I was standing on the deck of a Fraser River gillnetter – the same sense of mystery and awe, the same exhilarating closeness to the source of things. But I should point out that Edmonton is becoming more of a focus. I’m currently writing a full-length collection of prose and poetry that investigates my family’s pioneering role as Edmonton
beekeepers.

LP: Even when you do write about Edmonton, and I’m thinking here of the poem A Cup Of Coffee In Solitude which starts with the line –January in Edmonton – later you write -A car passes on the muffled road, spawning salmon slow. Do you think that earlier life will always infuse your work?

TB: Yes. as Flannery O’Connor said, “Who ever’s been through childhood has enough material for several lifetimes.”

LP: Your last book, the memoir The Lost Coast talks about growing up in Ladner on the Fraser River, your family and fishing. Your two novels Downriver Drift and The Paperboy’s Winter are set in that area and deal with the land/riverscape, families and fishing. Most novelists do mine their own lives but are careful to point out that the stories are fiction, only loosely based on real life. You sort of undermine that in the memoir by telling the real life stories that parts of the novels are based on. Any thoughts on that?

TB: Hmm, I wasn’t aware that most writers are careful to make the point re: fiction vs autobiography. It’s an odd thing to worry about. Good writing is good writing. Besides, as anyone who’s ever written a memoir will tell you, memory plays a lot of tricks with reality. Even when I’m writing straight out of my own life, I’m fictionalizing much of the time. The key point, of course, is that the writer must transmute lived experience into meaningful art.

LP. In the acknowledgments for your novel Downriver Drift one of the people you thank is writer Jack Hodgins. Hodgins is noted for the depiction of Vancouver Island life, or at least a certain Vancouver Island life, in his novels. Did you ever talk about the details and the sense of place in writing?

TB: Jack Hodgins actually edited Downriver Drift. And what a gift that was for a beginning novelist! Jack is a superb editor, sensitive to every little nuance of prose style and critical in the most encouraging way. I don’t recall that we talked much about the sense of place, likely because it’s not something either of us would really consider – we just write out
of the worlds we came from, without doubt, without apology. Most of our editing discussions were more technical.

LP: You have two new books of poetry out this fall. Nightwood Editions is publishing The Book Collector and Other Poems. What can you tell us about this book?

TB: Many of the poems in The Book Collector were written when I lived in Gibsons from 2004-2006, so there’s a Sunshine Coast flavour to many of the poems. Briefly, the book contains nearly 40 poems touching on a wide range of subjects, from books and art to soccer and salmon. I hope the metaphors are memorable; I put a lot of faith in them.

LP; Your other book of poetry coming out is from Gaspereau Press, the magnificently titled Refrain For Rental Boat #4. It is a 12 page , limited edition book priced at $160. Gaspereau is noted for their beautiful regular editions so I’m assuming this will be something quite special. What’s the story behind this book?

TB: Refrain for Rental Boat #4 was removed from my 2006 book, FATHOM, because the editor and I didn’t think that it fit tonally with the other poems. Then I read the poem after publication, at one of Gaspereau’s annual parties in Kentville, NS, and Andrew Steeves, who liked it a lot, wondered why it hadn’t been included in FATHOM. After I told him, he said he’d like to do the poem as a limited edition. There’s only been four copies finished to this point, three of which I have. 45 copies will be made in total, and I believe the cost is $100.

LP: Earlier this year you were one of the winners of the Guggenheim Prize, the only Canadian winner. It’s certainly an honour to win and the prize money attached would be welcome too. This was your first attempt at the Guggenheim, did you have any expectations of being chosen for the award?

TB: No serious expectations, but I never apply for things if I don’t think I have a chance. And the Guggenheim is an award whose criteria seemed a good fit for me, in that the Foundation wants to fund those with a solid publishing record who seem likely to continue publishing.

LP: You are a prolific writer, have published books of poetry, novels, a memoir and edited a book of interviews with poets. You won a number of awards for that writing as well and yet you seem to fly under the radar as far as the press goes. It’s difficult to find interviews with you or even articles about you. It was surprising that even for the Guggenheim, it appears only the National Post did a stand alone interview with you. Is that a deliberate strategy on your part? Do you avoid media coverage? If not why do you think you get overlooked.

TB: I don’t exactly avoid the media, but I certainly don’t seek them out either. Newspapers, TV, magazines (even, gasp, websites) rarely pay for a writer’s time, and, given my busy domestic and writing schedule, I can’t afford to work for nothing. Usually, though, I’ll do interviews when I have a new book out. All things considered, I’m a pretty amenable type.

LP: In The Lost Coast you make the point that you don’t live in the past, that you type on a computer, communicate with your editors over the internet but a certain yearning for the past and maybe even some anger at losing that past seems to be part of your writing. Do you think so?

TB: Absolutely. But I’m not stupid about the past either. Of course there’s no Golden Age. On the other hand, there’s almost no fishing industry anymore, the growth of the farmed fish business moves along in happy tandem with the growth of neo-conservative conformity, and every year moves me closer towards death – yearning and anger seem reasonable enough.

LP. What’s your next project?

TB: I’ve just finished a new non-fiction ms. which is entirely different from THE LOST COAST. In fact, the whole story takes place in Edmonton, mostly in a library, and deals with my interest in a little-known American poet named Weldon Kees who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955. I’m also doing preliminary research for a new novel set on the Fraser River and in the American South in the mid and late nineteenth century.

LP: When you were working as a fisherman, you were also writing poetry, correct? Was your writing something that ever came up with other fishermen and if so, what was the reaction?

TB: No, my writing never came up, mostly because I never brought it up. But then, I wouldn’t want to talk about poetry with most graduate students in English Literature either! In fact, my salmon fishing poems, all my poems set on the Fraser, have gone over very well with Ladner folks.

LP: In our memoir you indicate your dissatisfaction with the school system so I’m assuming your kids are home schooled? How does that affect your writing, what special allowances do you have to make to your writing schedule?

TB: Yes, my kids are home schooled. Not only do I think school is one of the great brainwashers into North American culture and capitalism (a culture not entirely repellent, of course, but one that could be resisted a bit more seriously), I just don’t want not to see my children for six hours a day, five days a week. I mean, I really enjoy them. I’m selfish that way. On average, I suppose I write two hours a day and parent the rest. This is a tricky schedule when I get deep into a book, but hell, children are more important than books.