May 2018 – The New Quarterly

Writing Spaces: Mary Thaler

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Mary Thaler, author of “House-sitting in Iqaluit” in Issue #146.

I do a lot of my writing at the public library. It’s quiet, well-lit, and mostly distraction free. I can’t get up five times an hour to fix myself a snack, or even waste time surfing the internet, since the strangers around me might see my computer screen. (That’s vanity of course—logically, I know no one’s really looking). I go there with a friend who is a free-lance translator, so making dates to go to the library is a small way that we can help each other stay accountable in our work. Since we walk over, we even get a bit of exercise and fresh air, and a dose of companionability before we plunge into our work.

Although I do more and more of my writing on the computer, I always keep a notebook and pen beside me. If I get stuck with whatever I’m working on, it’s helpful to slow down my process by writing by hand. With pen and paper, I feel more free to fly off on tangents, scratch things out, and draw connecting arrows all over my page.

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks (and decks, docks, beds, and favourite hiking trails) of our contributors! Check out the full series here.

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Writing Spaces: Marion Agnew

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Marion Agnew, author of “Atomic Tangerine” in Issue #146.

Office 2018:
My office is in our house’s walk-out basement, and many months of the year I look at snowdrifts or the frozen surface of Lake Superior. That’s why I created the corner, shown in this photo, for comfortable reading and contemplation. The chair and hand-made rug are mid-century modern, from my husband’s mother’s home. The table, just peeking in at the bottom, was made by my grandfather from scrap wood. The Keith Haring dancers on the shower curtain tacked to the wall never fail to make me smile. Whether I’m sitting in the chair with a book, or sitting behind the desk wishing I could be hanging out there, this corner is a bright spot in my workspace.

Outdoor Office 2018:
This photo was taken from the rowboat, where much of the real work of my writing life happens. The camp in the photo is Cainaan, painted Atomic Tangerine. I was rowing around the point from the camp to our house to store the rowboat for the winter. When I row, I may be the only living person in the boat, but I remember family members as a drift and putter and play. While rowing, I’ve even encountered fictional characters who later appear in my indoor office, while I sit with fingers on the keyboard, staring at snowdrifts from my office.

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Writing Spaces Reading Spaces: Ron Schafrick

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the reading space of Ron Schafrick, author of “Stunts” in Issue #146. Ron has previously shared his writing space with us here.

Ron Schafrick Reading Space: Anna Karenina

Reading Space 1: Most evenings I spend reading on the living room sofa, and on the end table beside me is my ever-growing pile of “to-read” books. At the moment, as you can see, I’m in the middle of Anna Karenina—an amazing book; not the dry, boring, difficult read I’d imagined it would be! I’m also really looking forward to some of the books in the background. Orhan Pamuk’s Snow is probably next in the queue. Beneath the Pamuk novel are Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus and Mary Lavin’s In a Cafe. I heard stories by both authors in recent New Yorker podcasts, and I’m very much looking forward to digging into those. Beneath the Lavin book is Emily Fridlund’s collection of stories, Catapult, which I read a very good review of in The Atlantic. Can’t wait to get to her book too. The pile to the right is Anthony Powell’s novel A Dance to the Music of Time—a very Proustian novel divided into 12 books. I read the first two books, thought they were okay, but I found myself hooked with the third book. He’s a fantastic stylist and very funny. It’s about time I start Book IV! So much to read, so little time!

Ron Schafrick reading space: couch with cats

Reading Space 2: My reading companions. They’re always there beside me whenever I’m on the couch. Naby, on the left, was a cat I rescued back in 2002 when I lived in Korea. A year later I got him a companion, Ningu. If they were real children, I sometimes think, they would both be in high school right now, and Naby would be getting his driver’s licence! Naby, by the way, means “butterfly” in Korean—a common name for cats in Korea—and Ningu is short for “nan-ning-gu,” which sort of means “tank top,” since she’s all black except for a white underbelly.

Ron Schafrick's reading space: the author with magazine and cat

Reading Space 3: Me and the TNQ. Another great issue!

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Writing Spaces: Rebecca Papucaru

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Rebecca Papucaru, author of Three Poems in Issue #146. Subscribers can read Rebecca’s poems, “Lobster Dinner,” “My Anne,” and “The Panic Room (Glue Ear at Forty-Five)” here.

Photograph of Rebecca Papuvaru's mother holding a newspaper

This is an exercise in shame, describing my writing spaces, and not just because I am a lifelong renter. The first space is the office I share with my partner. The desk and chair come from the As Is department of IKEA. There’s artwork on the salmon walls, by my maternal grandmother and my partner when he was a (precocious) child. There’s photograph of my mother on the desk, in which she’s holding up a newspaper showing an article I’d written about my visit to the village of Montreal, France. I found this photograph after she’d died. She’d kept it; I’d forgotten ever taking it, but it’s there now to remind me of her pride in me.

Louis the black cat lounges on his back in Rebecca Papucaru's preferred writing space: her bed.

But I rarely if ever write in this space. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, compares writing to dreaming, so perhaps that’s why I prefer to write in bed, or when I’m feeling the need to discipline myself, stretched out on the sofa. But mostly it’s because of the cats. They lure me onto soft surfaces, and they’re good company for writers, I think. Maybe they want me to take a load off, or maybe they just think it’s wrong to exercise your imagination near anything deemed, As Is.

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Writing Spaces: J.R. McConvey

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of J.R. McConvey, author of “Sheepasnörus Rex” in Issue #146.

The giant squid is one of the few species humans haven’t learned to hunt. We know it’s real, but it’s so elusive that we understand very little about it; it exists half in the realm of myth, a being that crosses the boundary between the real and the fantastic. My work is all about the pursuit of an elusive story, trying to coax out that idea or character that plumes in the consciousness like a cloud of ink. So I put a lot of cephalopods on my walls, to inspire the pursuit. I also have plenty of books, for knowledge and energy, some good speakers, a few percussion instruments, a pair of VR goggles, a rocking chair, and a window that connects me to the real world, where I can see the CN Tower poking up, tentacle-like, above the rooftops.

Office Writing Space. Photo by J.R. McConvey

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks of our contributors! Check out the full series here.

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All Things Literary for The New Quarterly

Kitchener-Waterloo’s own The New Quarterly (TNQ), a small but feisty literary magazine, garnered three nominations at this year’s National Magazine Awards. The nominations were announced in early May.

The New Quarterly has earned two nominations in the Fiction category as well as one for Poetry. The competition was strong as close to 200 Canadian print and digital magazines submitted their best, in both official languages.

In the 19 years that it has participated in the National Magazine Awards, TNQ has won 10 gold, 7 silver and had 38 honourable mentions.

For this year’s 41st National Magazine Awards, TNQ’s three nominees are:

K.D. Miller, for “Olly Olly Oxen Free” [Fiction] — her fourth short-story collection, All Saints, was a shortlisted finalist for the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize in 2014, and she has published a novel, Brown Dwarf, and an essay collection, Holy Writ.
Bill Gaston, for “Kiint” [Fiction] — in addition to seven novels, three plays, one book each of poetry and nonfiction, he has published seven collections of short stories, including Gargoyles and Juliet Was a Surprise which were both nominated for the Governor General’s Fiction Award and Mount Appetite for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Sneha Madhavan-Reese, for “Frost Flowers”; “Etymology”; “Cosmology” [Poetry] — an award-winning writer and author of the poetry collection Observing the Moon. Her poems also appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016.

The New Quarterly is a non-profit Canadian literary magazine housed at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo. The magazine has been publishing the best of new Canadian writing — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, author interviews and talk about writing — for 37 years.

TNQ is the only literary magazine to be shortlisted in such diverse categories as Sports Writing, Arts & Entertainment, How-To and Best Single Issue at the National Magazine Awards.

The National Magazine Awards winners will be announced on Friday, June 1 at a gala in Toronto.

TNQ also hosts the annual Wild Writers Literary Festival (WWLF) in Waterloo and Kitchener. Last year’s participating authors included Alison Pick, Kathleen Winter, Stacey May Fowles, Karen Connelly, and Wayne Johnston. The seventh annual WWLF will be November 2 to 4, 2018.

The New Quarterly is proud to manage the 7th annual Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat, May 4 to 9, 2018, at the magnificent Lodge at Pine Cove. This retreat is for writers of all skill levels—from novice to accomplished—to write fiction (short stories and novels) and nonfiction (memoirs and essays).

In addition, TNQ editor Pamela Mulloy’s debut novel has been released to rave reviews. “The Deserters is a story not of escape but of the deep, human need to belong to a place, and to one another,” wrote Helen Humphreys, a winner of the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize. Published by Véhicule Press, The Deserters is available at better bookstores everywhere. The K-W launch party for the book will be held on Wednesday, May 23 at 7:00 p.m. at the Heritage Railway Station (10 Father David Bauer Drive, Waterloo).

For more information, visit TNQ online at www.tnq.ca or contact info@tnq.ca. To find out more about this spring’s Write on the French River Creative Writing Retreat, contact Susan Scott at sscott@tnq.ca. For publicity inquiries, please contact Catherine Brunskill, Publicity Director, at cbrunskill@newquarterly.net.

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Writing Spaces: Sue Bracken

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Sue Bracken, author of “Echame Flores” in Issue #146.

My writing room is affectionately called The Tower, being the only room on the 3^rd floor. The elements are accentuated up here, probably because all four walls and the roof are exposed to the world. Rain becomes a torrent, and the wind makes me feel like Dorothy about to quit Kansas.

My partner’s art work surrounds me here. The cat visits me sometimes, purring her presence. The rug was a gift, is great for horizontal work and yes, it really does tie the room together! A north and south facing window light up all of this. How could I not be inspired?

The tower is my usual writing space, but I am fortunate to be part of a family cottage in Haliburton, Ontario. That is my favourite place (and photo). The journal is a leather gift, too heavy for city transit, but perfect for the cottage. I love writing from the deck for the view. The pines rule. It’s a bit of wild that I need—NO CONDOS, different bugs, and rare snapping turtles. Even the winter is gorgeous. And there’s history here: our son’s first steps, first underwater, first cookie.

I feel open here. (That’s probably because when I’m here I’m on holidays!) We are on the lake and I can plunge in whenever. Many of my poems deal with water, or references to water. I’m a life-long swimmer. I’d write poems under water if I could!

Sue Bracken Writing Space: The Cottage in winter

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks of our contributors! Check out the full series here.

Read more

Writing Spaces: Kerry Clare

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Kerry Clare, author of “Happy Trails” in Issue #146.

Ten years ago we moved into our apartment, and I set up an office space that was literally a garret—as a writer, it made me feel very legit. And for a while I even worked there, except that it was barely insulated and unheated, so it was freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer. And then not long after that, I had a baby, and the garret ceased to be my writing place, and become a space to store baby clothes instead. Which sounds like the saddest story—“the pram in the hall,” and all that—but it isn’t. The thing I discovered about working in a garret once my daughter was born was that I didn’t want a room of my own, or at least not a literal one. The garret was either too hot or too cold, but it was also always too quiet and lonely.

In 2013, I had my second child, and suddenly my writing life kicked off in earnest. The timing in some ways was a coincidence, but not entirely. The years between my babies had been a kind of limbo, writing-wise, but when the second arrived I knew my baby-having days were over and it was time to get to work. Plus I had a book coming out the next year, an anthology of essays about motherhood, The M Word, a book I edited while lying on my couch while the baby napped on my chest, and that couch—its west corner in particular—became my office after that. The following summer the baby could nap in her crib, and I wrote my novel, Mitzi Bytes, while sitting on the couch while my eldest daughter sat beside me watching Annie.

One problem with the couch though was that it was just too far from the kettle. And so at some point, probably around when my second daughter started going to pre-school, I started working in the kitchen. We had a gorgeous oak table made for us a couple of years ago, and the fact of its solidity is significant to me for so many reasons. I love the wood grains, the smoothness of the surface, and all the space available as I spread my books and papers all around. I also love the way the sun shines in from the south-facing windows around lunch time during the winter months, so much light, and warmth, and the way that I’ve learned I don’t even have to look at the clock but can map the day by where the light falls. And by how many pots of tea I’ve brewed since the morning.

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks of our contributors! Check out the full series here.

Read more

Month: May 2018

Writing Spaces: Mary Thaler

Writing Spaces: Marion Agnew

Writing Spaces Reading Spaces: Ron Schafrick

Writing Spaces: Rebecca Papucaru

Writing Spaces: J.R. McConvey

All Things Literary for The New Quarterly

Writing Spaces: Sue Bracken

Writing Spaces: Kerry Clare

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