Susan Orlean Comes to Banff

I headed into the smoky, sultry Rocky Mountains to hear Susan Orlean in conversation with Ian Brown at the Banff Centre. She read four excerpts of her work, jammed with detail. (No surprise that her husband has had to shame her into packing light when she travels. Reformed, she told Brown she came carry-on to Banff.) In the Q&A, no one asked about her note-taking technique, but she did dish about how she gets people to talk: be pure of heart, she says, come to a story without knowing anything. Outline? Agenda? Structure? “I begin with nothing.”

She looked a little like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, petite and pretty in a polka-dot summer dress and white sandals. A person you could get chatty with.

And what about the blank page, after a 25-year career? No writer’s block, but she does admit to performance anxiety. “You don’t build equity as a writer.”

I came home with The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, a collection of “encounters with extraordinary people” published in 2001. First stop for me when I dig in? “The American Man, Age Ten.” She spoke at length about that piece with Brown: a profile of the young McCaulay Culkin assigned by Esquire that turned into something else entirely. Why the change of direction? A different story caught her imagination and she chased it down.

“I’m just curious,” Orlean said last night with a girlish grin. “I’m a tourist of the human condition.”

Seven random truths my father taught me

1. Where you stand depends on where you sit.

2. Dear Mother: Life’s a bugger. Joe.

3. It’s only money.

4. Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.

5. Take no prisoners.

6. If your aunt had balls, she’d be your uncle.

7. I didn’t dress you, cowboy.

Thanks to Susan Calder for the prod, and to Lori Hahnel and Rea Tarvydas for priming the pump.

Snapshots from a Literary Walk

The first Sunday in May, the air in Calgary was damp and brisk. The sky threatened more snow. Undeterred, a crowd gathered in the lobby of the Palliser Hotel. Gloved, toqued and layered, we set off into the streets for the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society's first literary walk.

These photos capture some of the magic we stirred up that day in the city's chilly shadows.

Across the street from the Palliser Hotel, I talk about the Alberta expressionist painter, poet and essayist, Maxwell Bates (1906-1980). His father designed the Grain Exchange Building, Calgary's first skyscraper, located kitty-corner to the hotel. Maxwell Bates's unfinished manuscript Vermicelli – an experimental mosaic of ideas and stories – was what we would now call creative nonfiction.

Photo: Ben Gibbard

Novelist Fred Stenson sketches the history of the Hudson's Bay Company in Calgary, in the welcome shelter of the store's elegant, Venice-inspired arcade. When this building opened in 1913, it offered a circulating library and reading room to its patrons.

Photo: Ben Gibbard

In front of the Calgary Herald Block, literary historian George Melnyk recounts the story of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, who worked as a reporter at the Herald in the 1920s. Claiming to be the son of a Blackfoot chief, Long Lance was later exposed and nicknamed "The Glorious Imposter." 

Photo: Leo Aragon

Author and CNFC co-founder Myrna Kostash holds forth on Laura Salverson, the novelist and award-winning memoirist who rented a studio in the Lougheed Block (now the Belvedere Restaurant) in the 1930s.

Photo: Ben Gibbard

Harry Sanders, the good-humouredl Historian Laureate Emeritus of Calgary came along, too. His Historic Walks of Calgary (2005) is filled with facts, curiosities and inspiration.

Photo: Leo Aragon

Kris Demeanor shares his findings after a term as Calgary's first Poet Laureate. Calgary, he notes, is a city of " infuriating possibility."

Photo: Ben Gibbard

Aritha van Herk and Emily Murphy: two Alberta mavericks.

Photo: Leo Aragon

Author Ted Bishop and Barbara Patterson's  Women Are Persons! sculpture in Olympic Plaza.

Photo: Leo Aragon

Myrna Kostash warms the crowd with her take on Laura Salverson's fierce Icelandic patriotism.

Down at ground level, Fonzie takes the literary walk in canine stride.

Photo: Leo Aragon

A beautiful limited-edition map, designed by ACAD student Soo Kim, features her original watercolour drawings. Thanks to Maranda Reprographics for printing the map, and to the walk sponsor, Calgary law firm Stones Carbert Waite LLP.

Next year, the Creative Nonfiction Collective's annual conference will be held in Victoria, BC, April 24-26, 2015. I plan to take my walking shoes.

I'll leave you with one last photo from the literary walk: worth at least a thousand words.

Photo: Leo Aragon

A Post-Conference Creative Nonfiction Reading List

There wasn’t much time for reading at last weekend’s Creative Nonfiction Collective conference, but I carried a pile of books home with me: several wonderful new essay collections, and Judy McFarlane’s Writing with Grace: A Journey Beyond Down Syndrome.

I also brought home scribbled notes of things I want to read, and, in some cases, re-read. Here are a few of the titles at the top of my list, in no particular order:

The Art of the Essay, Lydia Fakundiny

This out-of-print book pre-dates Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay by three years. Joanna Eleftheriou, the bright young scholar who led a session on the lyric essay with her University of Missouri colleague Lauren Fath, told me there is gold in this important collection.

An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery, Janna Malamud Smith

I inhaled Smith’s wonderful book last year. When Jane Silcott told me she was reading An Absorbing Errand on the flight to Calgary, I realized I need to re-read the book; this time, more slowly.

“A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay,” by Brenda Miller in Writing Creative Nonfiction, Carolyn Forché and Philip Gerard, eds.

My copy of Miller’s classic craft essay is covered with marginalia, but there is room for more. Miller shows us the lyric essay from the inside. Here’s a taste of where she's going: “We’ve entered a realm of unknowing, a place where definitions are constantly in flux, a place where answers are not as important as the questions to which they give rise.”

The Girl in Saskatoon, Sharon Butala

I’ve read Butala’s memoir, The Perfection of the Morning, but I haven’t kept up with her recent nonfiction. At the conference plenary, Communicating with the Dead, Butala said that even though the deceased are constantly reaching out to writers, they are “ultimately unknowable.” I’m curious to find out how she navigates this landscape in The Girl in Saskatoon.

Madeline Sonik’s upcoming essay in the summer edition of The Malahat Review

At the end of Sonik’s excellent talk about crossing genres, she shared an anecdote about her soon-to-be-published essay concerning the poet Ted Hughes. Time to subscribe to The Malahat Review. A side trip back to Sonik’s Afflictions and Departures is probably in order, too.

Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother, Helen Humphreys

My reader’s rule: after three creative nonfiction writers rave about a book, it’s time to find out what they’re talking about.

Renovating Heaven, Andreas Schroeder

Canadian writers call Andreas Schroeder the “godfather of creative nonfiction.” At CNFC, we honour him as one of our founders. Renovating Heaven is Schroeder’s autobiographical novel. I can't wait to read it.

The Concubine’s Children, Denise Chong

I read Denise Chong’s first book too long ago. At her session this weekend, my pen couldn't move fast enough to capture all of the gems Chong shared. Here is one I caught that continues to hum: “Turn every surprise into your advantage.” I may wait until August and get myself a new copy, when The Concubine’s Children is issued as a Penguin Modern Classic.

That's my creative nonfiction reading list for this spring. What's yours?