Congratulations to Anne Carson for the Nobel Prize in Literature! A very proud day for Canada.

My September/October flurry of events has nearly wrapped up (in my last newsletter, I told you about the earlier stages of said flurry.)

Last week, I was the host for a conversation with R.F. Kuang, and then a few days later, on stage with Eden Robinson and Amanda Connolly, with Susan Johnston as the host. Both events were wonderful; it was a particular joy to meet Eden Robinson, whose work I have loved for years. Pretty rare that you meet a writer whose work you adore and the experience of meeting the person is even better! Both those events were presented by the Ottawa International Writers Festival — do check out the events they have planned for this edition of their fall festival, coming later this month.

I was also on a panel the same week at the Kingston Writersfest with the very talented Sophia Hannan and Rebecca Hirsch Garcia, wonderfully moderated by Kimberly Lemaire.

At every event, it was a delight to meet readers and sign books.

Did I get a single photograph of any of these events so that I could preserve the memories, share them with my social media followers and make this newsletter more appealing? Absolutely not. I did make my notes and answer the emails and get myself on time to everything and speak somewhat cogently and I did not lose my glasses, my car keys, my wallet, or my phone, and I did keep going to my day job as well, and apparently photos were too much to ask beyond that.

Here instead is a photo of my cat letting me know her thoughts about my choice to spend so much time away from her.

Last night, I gave a workshop on the imagination and ideas to the national capital branch of the Canadian Authors Association, which I enjoyed very much.

Things are quieting down now, which is a good thing because my introvert battery was flashing red, and my copy edit review is languishing untouched, not to mention my novella in progress, not to mention housework or yardwork. But I do have a couple of upcoming October things to tell you about!

I will be at Can*Con, my favourite convention, on Oct. 16-18. I have a signing on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I’m moderating a panel called Quirks and Perks of Writing for a Big IP, and right after, I’m on a panel called The Limitations of Reinvention. Both panels have absolutely stellar participants, so if you’re at Can*Con this year, please do come, and/or say hi if you see me in the halls.

Then on that Sunday, Oct. 18, I’m going to dash from Can*Con over to Wakefield, Quebec, where I’m moderating a conversation with Amal El-Mohtar and Charles de Lint, both of whom I have long admired as writers, and both of whom I have enjoyed knowing as people for only a little less long. Tickets are selling quickly for this, so please do reserve if you’d like to come.

As I have been spending a lot of time on the road, I’ve had time to listen to audiobooks.

The audiobook I listened to on my way to the Stratford Festival was, appropriately enough, James Shapiro’s examination of 1599 in the life of Shakespeare, a year in which he wrote four plays. A riveting book. Especially as a writer, I found it very poignant, this glimpse at the working life of a playwright, including the revisions and connections and influences and artistic concerns, amid the pressures of family life and politics. Highly recommend the audiobook narrated by the author.

I thought I had read The Watch that Ends the Night years ago, but then when I started this audiobook for a “reread”, I didn’t remember any of it. So now I suspect I only thought I read The Watch that Ends the Night because I had read Two Solitudes. Or perhaps I read it and it didn’t stick because I wasn’t in the right place for it at the time.

This time, I was absolutely in the right place for it. Not surprising, because TWTETN is largely a novel about being middle-aged and Canadian when the world goes to shit, so I guess I am in a mood to relate. It was written in 1958 and it’s about a cluster of Montrealers in the 30s and 40s. Every sentence is so unhurried, unfussy, confident, observant. Two of its sentences are very well known to Canadians of my generation for being quoted (albeit in abridged form) in a Tragically Hip song.¹

There are things I didn’t entirely like about the book. I would have liked one more section please about the most interesting story that happened to any of them, which we never get to learn about. Also, it is endlessly frustrating how difficult it apparently was for 20th century male authors to write a novel without including any creepiness toward women; this one is actually much better in that regard than most of its peers, but I could have done without one minor note of narrator ickiness about one character, just here and there, a soupçon of ick. Alas. All the same, it is a great work of Canadian literature and a beautifully drawn record of a time and place, and I found it very relevant to an age of recurring fascism.

I highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Julian Casey in precisely the right faintly-mid-Atlantic-educated-anglophone-central-Canadian-of-three-generations-ago accent. (This almost extinct accent actually has a name: Canadian Dainty, which sounds like an alternate name for a Nanaimo Bar, but is how CBC presenters used to talk. The narrator of The Watch that Ends the Night is a CBC columnist, so it fits!)

Talk to you in a fortnight, by which time I hope to have the copy edits on The Realm Invisible done!