Montreal Book Launch Sept 2024

Here I am speaking with Elise Moser at the Montreal launch of my new novel, Colours in Her Hands, which was published in September by the Freehand Books in Calgary. Ask for it at your favourite bookstore or library! I want people to meet Mina. 

 

Mina, the central character of the novel, has Down Syndrome. I don't think that's the most important fact about her, but it is what you would notice if you met her walking down the street. What I am hoping will happen as you read the novel, is that you will see the whole of Mina's life--everything else that matters. 

When the novel opens, Mina is living by herself, has a job and a boyfriend. This has been the status quo for almost 20 years, but Mina is now middle-aged and beginning to have difficulties. This raises the question for those close to her whether she is safe on her own. Autonomy and dignity as we age is an issue that we all have to deal with. 

I also explore creativity and disability--how an individual may not be able to explain in words but can still express herself powerfully. 

It felt important to write not only about Mina but also the people involved in her life: her brother and legal guardian, Bruno; his girlfriend, Gabriela; Mina's new friend, Iris, who designs and sews clothes and therefore appreciates the wildly inventive embroideries Mina creates. This is Mina's world.

 

In this clip, Elise has just asked me about writing in English and occasionally including French.   https://youtu.be/P9mnF2bKuec?si=Qrv1Bki-nOPHS8zM

The launch was held at Librairie Pulp Books in Verdun in Montreal. The top two photos were taken by Jack Ruttan who was at one end of the room; the last two photos and the video were taken by Robert Aubé who was at the other end of the room. Thank you, Jack and Robert.

Elise is well-known in the Anglo Quebec writing community and also farther afield. She's written three great books: Because I Have Loved and Hidden it, Lily and Taylor, What Milly Did: The Remarkable Pioneer of Plastics Recycling. I am also fortunate in that she's a friend. We often go on long tromps together.

Here's the star of the evening:

walking and writing / life balance

Years ago, when I was too impatient to wait for the bus to go to work, I realized that I could leave home only 10 minutes earlier and get to work by walking. Ditto the return route. That was how I started: 8 k/day, 5 days/wk.
That was a couple of decades ago. I no longer work in the same place. I still walk.

Walking clears my head. I like that it's gentle exercise. I couldn't sustain anything more aggressive. Moving my legs and body is a good antidote to the stationary hours I spend at my desk writing.

In the sense that walking progresses at a slow pace, walking mimics my slow movement through narrative.






The act of walking balances the act of writing.





My words stay with me too -- even when I don't set out to think about writing while I'm walking.

I replay dialogue. I consider adding a flashback to help with a plot conundrum.

Or I decide to describe the place that I'm walking through.

It often isn't a conscious decision.

Of course, I'm not the first writer who appreciates walking. I belong to a tradition of writers who trudge. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce to name a couple. More recently, Rebecca Solnit has written a book, wanderlust: A History of Walking.


I have friends who are writers with whom I go on long walks.

A good friend and writer, Elise Moser, suggested we do a walking/writing workshop to introduce others to the benefits that we experience.

Last Saturday, Elise and I conducted the workshop under the auspices of the Quebec Writers' Federation.

We planned a route that would take us along the edge of the upscale Montreal neighbourhood of Westmount, then down past the Lachine Canal to Pointe St. Charles, where I live and where I set my novel, Five Roses.

Between walks, we wrote.

Thank you to the Quebec Writers' Federation, the venerable Atwater Library, and the small but welcoming Café Lalli for sitting-down space. Thank you to all who participated for making it an enjoyable day.

This sweetie played a role too, because I saw her while I was walking -- so who knows where her red dress, red shoes, and the two red balls might appear next.

Another Story Book Shop, March 1st, 2015

Last weekend several Montreal writer friends converged to read at Another Story Book Shop on Roncesvalles in Toronto. Thank you to Christine Fischer Guy for hosting us, Another Story for providing the venue, the Quebec Writers' Federation and the Canada Council for sending us.

Here we are before the start of the event. Then: Elise Moser, Monique Polak, Shelagh Plunkett, Susan Gillis, Kathleen Winter, myself. You can see we believe in emphatic readings.

 

I'm not trying to make a statement with the layout here. I can't figure it out.

Here's the effervescent poster Kathleen made for us. Bridges, wings, and factories!

Thank you to Randi Helmers for taking pictures--and bringing her ukulele.

rapunzel reads in pointe st-charles

http://roverarts.com/2013/12/alice-zorn/

Here's the link to a video of me reading from my novel Arrhythmia. As well, you can see some highlights of life in Pointe St-Charles... other people who live here, the rail line that separates the Pointe from the prettier neighbourhoods of Montreal, the underpass--that belongs to the rail line--where my voice echoes.

(Note: if the above link doesn't work, this one does:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4i4b2FqWY )

Many Montrealers don't even know that there's a residential district below downtown, the Ville-Marie highway, the rail line. You have to cross the Lachine Canal, find a detour under, over or around the rail line, pass the derelict factories and keep going. Here are the row houses where the labourers who dug the Lachine Canal lived--the industrial history from which Montreal sprang and which helped open the country. From the Atlantic, up the St. Lawrence River, along the Lachine Canal, to the rail lines, to the Great Lakes and beyond.

When I'm not in the underpass reading, I'm standing against my favourite wall of graffiti. It's the long north wall of the arena, where kids play hockey and go swimming, and where adults vote when there's a referendum which--you never know--can always happen in Quebec. About a week before my rendezvous with Elise Moser and Leila Marshy, someone had painted a long washing line with many pairs of mismatched socks and pretty underwear hung against a clear sky. I hoped no one would paint the Hulk or a locomotive or amorous messages over the laundry before my shoot. Maybe we were helped by the rain--because a couple of days later the underwear got covered, bit by bit, by other statements. It's the fate of all graffiti.

Elise Moser and Leila Marshy have organized a series of videos of Montreal writers reading in their neighbourhoods. There are a few us in the Pointe, so I feel especially lucky to have been chosen. Perhaps the project will continue? There are so many writers in Montreal. The other videos can be found on the Montreal online arts and cultural magazine, The Rover.