Literary Photographer

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LP: You have a new book of essays coming out, a book you co-edited  (with Jamie Dopp) on hockey called Now is the Winter. What can you  tell us about this book? RH: Let me sell it: if you want to think about hockey inside and outside the rink, inside and outside the arena, inside [...]

LP: John, you’re a visual chronicler of Ottawa, do you see Ottawa as a documentary project? JWM: I guess I see myself as photographer who happens to live in Ottawa. I don’t necessarily think of myself documenting Ottawa as a project. That would imply that I have a vision and a plan which I don’t. [...]

LP: You’ve had two books of essays published Red Laredo Boots ( New Star Books ) and Phantom Limb ( Thistledown Press ). What is it about the essay form that interests you as a writer? tk: I have a curious and undisciplined mind. I’m interested in the details of a place, a time, the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

What do you do when you find yourself obsessed by a writer and one of his books? If you’re artist Robert Amos and the writer is James Joyce and the book is Finnegans Wake you use your art training to investigate the text. By this process Amos has created a new art with Joyce’s words. [...]

LP: You have a new book coming out any day now called Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures and Romantic Obsessions of Elisha Kent Kane. What can you tell us about this book? KM: Race to the Polar Sea tells the story of Elisha Kent Kane, a nineteenth-century explorer who sailed north in [...]

First off, let’s look at who Rob Wiersema is. You’ve been described 
as a writer, journalist and bookseller. You’re also married and a 
father. How do you balance all these roles? Not all that well, depending on the day, to be perfectly honest.
The fact is, my job at the bookstore is full time. Writing is [...]

Jailbreaks, 99 Canadian Sonnets, edited by Zacharia Wells LP: How did Jailbreaks come to be? ZW: I’ve always been drawn to the sonnet and had read a few recently published international sonnet anthologies. I found them to be not quite international enough, particularly when it came to Canada. I started mentally cataloguing all the Canadian [...]

Canada Post has just released a pair of stamps celebrating the 100th anniversary of everyone’s favourite literary redhead. No we’re not talking about Pippi Longstocking. It is of course Lucy Maud Montgomery’s creation, Anne of Green Gables.The stamps, based on paintings by Ben Stahl (Anne) and Christopher Kovacs (Green Gables house), are available individually or [...]