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Ep. #126: Carrie Snyder

Carrie Snyder lives in Waterloo, Ontario and is the author of two story collections, including The Juliet Stories, which was a finalist for Canada’s 2012 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, Girl Runner will be published in Canada by House of Anansi on September 6 and in the United States via HarperCollins and in the U.K. via Two Roads in 2015. Snyder is also a dedicated recreational athlete, the mother of four children, and the author of the popular literary blog Obscure CanLit Mama. Ahead of her appearance at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival on Sunday September 14, Snyder and I discuss her lovely home in Waterloo and its century-long history, a ghost house, oh, the places Carrie has lived in, birthday to birthday, the inspiration behind Girl Runner, running, writing a story collection like The Juliet Stories that reads like a novel, melding the present with the past in a double narrative structure, figuring out who characters are after you’ve written them, sibling couples and confusing spaces, the tangled and large Smart family tree, emotional conflict, whether or not we’re supposed to like Cora, Aganetha, womanhood and gender and sexual dynamics in sports and marketing, David Beckham, the shelf-life of athletes as competitors and public figures, amateur versus poor Olympians, athlete’s bodies, Aggie’s comfort with her own being and intellect, the parallels between Aganetha and Carrie, getting into running mid-life after thinking it was kinda dumb, the 25 KM Run for the Toad, hot yoga, learning how to swim when you’re not buoyant and in your mid-30s and then doing a triathlon within like a year of that, panicking in the pool, dredging up a near-drowning experience from your childhood, a fear of bicycling, bouncing between brief samples of the present and huge sections of historical memoir, the biological powers of women, the impact of child-rearing on artistic creativity and output, telling this quasi-fictional story about people who do special, unconventional things with their lives, the mystery and history of Girl Runner, always wanting to be a writer, sending letters to authors as a kid, learning the ins and outs of the publishing industry, if you want to write you have to keep doing it no matter what, responding to one’s calling, competing with yourself rather than your colleagues, Glad versus Aggie, American versus Canadian editors, House of Anansi and HarperCollins and Two Roads, researching for the next book, writing every day, My Struggle, book reviews, Obscure CanLit Mama, and then the finish line.

Related links: carriesnyder.com edenmillswritersfestival.ca vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #124: Claire Cameron

Claire Cameron is an acclaimed writer from Toronto whose first novel, The Line Painter, won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award for ‘best first novel.’ Her latest book is a harrowingly devastating one called The Bear, which is told from the perspective of a six year-old girl named Anna who must take care of her younger brother in the wilds of Algonquin Park after a horrible, incomprehensible tragedy strikes her family’s camping trip. The Bear is available now via Random House of Canada and Cameron is a participating author at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, where she’ll read on Sunday September 14. Here Claire and I discuss Toronto the cold and the hot and people in the city who complain, what inspired The Bear, how no one knows why bears attack, making other parents cry and laugh, reading and writing a six year-old’s perspective, how kids can stay in the moment, researching what kids say and think, how we understand death, how Stick might be comic relief, when Anna was a boy, coping with grief, Claire’s role in the story of The Bear, seeing things from her late father’s perspective, bears in society, demystifying bear attacks, Jaws and The Bear, the inspirational and tragic attack at Algonquin Park and basically living with black bears in Hearst, Ontario, Steven Herrero’s research on patterns and prevention of bear attacks, mothers with cubs might not be as dangerous lone, hungry males, collecting bear stories, don’t be a chicken turn musician, trying to teach one’s self to make hard-edged electronic music, how The Line Painter was inspired by a song Cameron wrote, loving Neil Young’s quiet/loud dynamic and seeing him in London, England, the Greendale tour, how Claire is working on at least three ‘dead books’ and at least one ‘live one,’ how people weirdly classify Claire’s writing in crime and horror categories, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, reading at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, and that’s all we could bear.

Related links: claire-cameron.com edenmillswritersfestival.ca vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #122: Heather O’Neill

Heather O’Neill is a talented and provocative novelist based in Montreal. Her first book was the celebrated Lullabies for Little Criminals, which won Canada Reads in 2007 and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, which was published by HarperCollins Canada this past April and tells the compelling story of a pair of directionless fraternal twins in Montreal, Noushcka and Nicolas Tremblay, who live in the shadow of their has-been folk-singer of a neglectful father and bare certain emotional scars as a result. Young Quebecois coming of age in 1995, they are separatists on one hand, but unwitting sovereignists on the other. Their creator is bringing their story with her as a participating author at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, where she’ll read on Sunday September 14. Here, Heather and I discuss how to pronounce Nicolas, why it’s difficult to describe what The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is about, the magic in the mundane, having an amicable break-up with a book you wrote, separatism, separating, and needing people you need to get away from, establishing boundaries to become your own person, why we’re reading this world from Noushcka’s perspective, what this book might say about the separatism/sovereignty debate, class divides, promiscuous has-been folk-singer daddy issues, embittered former child stars, Raphael the sexy bad boy, fame might be a drag, people who think authors are their characters, how Heather relates to her characters, how Quebec today relates to Quebec of the mid-1990s, how a teacher’s encouragement drew Heather to write a story about shrinking machines and a cockroach, needing to write, delving into creative non-fiction and how it intertwines with a novel like The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, the political folk music of Montreal that’s conjured in this book via Etienne Tremblay, Heather’s thoughts on film treatments of her works, Wes Anderson and The Royal Tenenbaums, her forthcoming book of short stories Dear Piglet out this spring, writing more than one story at a time, what Heather will be doing at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, @lethal_heroine, weird turns, and the end.

Related links: harpercollins.ca twitter.com/lethal_heroine vishkhanna.com

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