An Inside Look at TNQ
Entering The New Quarterly office for the first time was nerve-wracking. I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that my previous English teacher had worked with the publication, and that I would now be working there for the next five months.
What I found was a welcome surprise; possibly the best co-op placement I could have asked for. A small office packed with four desks and a very quickly approaching festival on hand that had me jumping into my work within the week.
I had no real experience in drafting formal emails and helping organize applications, but I learned. Throughout my time with TNQ, I picked up new skills and found myself diving deeper and deeper into the world of Canadian Literature. It felt intimidating at times, surrounded by such talent and well thought-out work (most of my own writing comes to a standstill after a while). However, it also allowed me to better understand the true value of a written work and try to value my own works as much as the other fabulous pieces I got to read every day.
I was also blessed with the chance to attend (and help host) the Wild Writers Literary Festival in November, where I met so many talented authors, young writers attending as a part of the bursary program, and long-time TNQ supporters. It was a wonderful experience that I hope to replicate in the years to come.
I joined The New Quarterly’s office as a part of the UCEP program with the University of Waterloo—a program which allows high school students to experience a semester at university and discover whether they want to continue on a particular academic path.
The program helped me decide on my current route into postsecondary education, and my time at TNQ has firmly cemented my love for writing and literature as the front-runner in my top career choices. As my family could tell you, this happy success is largely in part to the supportive and hardworking staff at The New Quarterly and all the groundwork they laid to help me build my own success.
As I left the office for the last time, it felt surreal—like I would be returning the next day regardless. But it didn’t happen; instead, I sat at home and pondered what to do now with my sudden free time.
The obvious answer was to write (and study for upcoming exams), which is what I continue to do. Since beginning my time in my co-op, I have found it much easier to write pieces of short fiction and even dabble in some poetry writing. I know that I will continue to be a future TNQ supporter and will hopefully inspire more young writers to enter the UCEP program, or to even simply explore their possibilities by looking into publications like TNQ.
And so, I bid a fond farewell to this wonderful chapter and will continue forward with my pen in hand to write the next. Although, this will hopefully not be the last you hear from me, because once you come on board with TNQ, you never truly leave.
Photos provided by Emilie Huhse and Jen Collins
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need them be just right. I want comfort, and I want to be surrounded by my things, photos of loved ones and art and quotes that inspire me, books and mementos. Of course, it would have been nice an entire room to myself—a room of one’s own—but since I have a family and a small apartment in an expensive city, I have to settle on a corner. In Toronto, I was lucky enough to 
claim a corner of the living room that was separated by a book shelf, and since the living room was on a different floor than the rest of the house it felt fairly private. Last August we moved to Tel Aviv, and now I’m literally banished to a corner of the living room, writing in the middle of the house, while the kid and her friends run around and my partner is on the phone, or making dinner, or doing whatever. Some days, I try to wake up early to steal some quiet hours to write. I still love 
my little corner: my desk is facing a large window, which offers plenty of sunlight, breeze, and a nice view of the Tel Aviv skyline. I like having a window to the world and I like watching the street when I write. In the fall and spring, when the window is open, I can hear people talking from below, catch snippets of phone conversations. Sometimes, because I am writing in English in a Hebrew speaking country (in which my work is usually set) it can be disorienting. But I’ve long embraced this dislocation as a part of my life and my writing. The most luxurious item in my writing corner is my electric desk, which rises up by the press of a button, so I can alternate between standing and writing. Once spring rolls in and the rain ends, I plan to find an old desk and an office chair and drag them up to the roof of the building so I can sit there from time to time and write in peace. I’m ridiculously excited about this plan.
(born in Saskatchewan, now resident in the UK) published Eve and the New Jerusalem, a well-received study of 19th-century feminism and socialism. Taylor seemed on the brink of a fine career. But overtaken by anxiety, she became addicted to alcohol and tranquillizers. As part of her treatment, she entered into a lengthy Freudian analysis, and at one stage was admitted to Friern Hospital, just at the time asylums were being closed in Britain and North America. This extraordinary memoir is Taylor’s account of her analysis, nestled within her consideration of the treatment of mental illness and a history of asylums. Taylor doesn’t spare her analyst, herself, or the reader in her harrowing narrative, but the writing is beautiful and her candour creates a story both moving and fully realized. (Spoiler alert: all’s well that … )
I am currently rereading Adam Nicolson’s The Seabird’s Cry—rereading, actually, because on my first go-through I simply gulped it down for the double pleasures of his knowledge and his language. Now I’m making notes. In the author’s own words:
I didn’t pick up this Montreal classic until I’d already left the city. As soon as I opened it, though, I was instantly transported back to the neighbourhood of Saint-Henri, and back in time to WWII. The novel follows a working-class Québécois family as they fall in love, go to work, hang out in diners, sign up for the army, and try everything to make ends meet. It’s very sensitively written: the author takes us right into the minds of all the characters, especially Florentine, the adolescent daughter, as she nurtures a massive crush on someone who barely cares. Most of us have been there…
My space is now painted a sunny yellow, has plenty of light, and is crammed with things I love to have close at hand. Bookshelves of course: poetry flanking both sides of the desk, fiction (authors A-Mc) along another wall, and a small shelf with various places where my work has been published (including THREE issues of TNQ!). Artwork, including the first original art I ever bought (a wintery water colour), illustrations from fairy tales and children’s books, two favourites among paintings by my late mother-in-law, a couple of pieces given to me as gifts, a line drawing entitled ‘Shy’ that people have said looks like me, and some palm-sized prints by Chris Tse and Manahil Bandukwala pinned to the end of one of the bookshelves.
Lotsa tchotchkes (or mathoms as I prefer to think of them, after hobbits’ collections) grace the tops of the shelves, and most other surfaces. I have cloisonné and pottery that belonged to my mother, craft projects my children made for me, small gifts, and objects that I somehow acquired and that seem to belong. Spirals abound, in a carved stone fossil ammonite dish that holds two other ammonites, on a silver dish where I keep a spell-bottle my niece Nicole made for me, and on a ceramic bowl with a collection of buttons. Family photos, tote bags with meaningful logos, various assemblages of feathers/stones/shells/dried flowers…
I fight a constant battle with paper, trying to keep things more or less under control so that clutter doesn’t frazzle the edges of my concentration. I recently gave away, to a grad student acquaintance, an old desk from the basement. But getting rid of it meant that its jam-packed contents spent several months in boxes stacked around my writing room. Conquering the chaos by sorting and finding space for all that stuff in the closets and drawers in my room felt like a major accomplishment.
Of course, not all of my writing happens here. Most of my pen-and-notebook work is done in an armchair, either in the living room beside my ‘to be read’ stack of books and magazines, or in the room off the kitchen, which now houses the M-Z fiction bookshelves along with the TV. But the writing room is where I sit, at my insufficiently ergonomic desk, to do the real work of revising and fine-tuning my poetry and fiction, as well as writing pieces like this one. It’s also where I take care of the business part of writing – research (aka getting lost down internet rabbit holes), submitting to journals, such self-promotion as I feel comfortable with, staying remotely connected with writer friends, and spending almost certainly too much time on social media. I’m grateful for the privilege of this space, the touchstone objects I’ve filled it with, and the comfort and inspiration of the memories they evoke.
My office is like our barn
As a writer,
My collage wall is