Online Interviews with Rattling Books Authors: Don McKay interview at Gaspereau Press site

Oh, Noble Nature Poet: An interview (of sorts) with Canada’s foremost nature poet, Don McKay
(First published in the Gaspereau Press 2001 Omnibus Reader)

The following is all that remains of an interview between Kathleen Martin and Don McKay, taped somewhere in the great Canadian North. the tape opens with sounds of water lapping gently and the occasional plash-splash of a paddle.

KM: Do you always write in a canoe like this?
DM: Yep. Gets me away from the paparazzi and the evils of digital technology. You know, that’s a not-too-bad J stroke you’re doing, young lady. Try not to shift your weight, though, it’s making me spill my martini.

.....read the rest.

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Songs for the Songs of Birds, a selection of poems written and read by Don McKay on the themes of birds, birding and flight is published by Rattling Books.

Online Interviews with Rattling Books Authors: Leo Furey interviews Michael Crummey for the Antigonish Review in 2002

The Antigonish Review # 131
Leo Furey Interviews Michael Crummey
(May 8,'02)

excerpt:

LF:
You cited the BC poet, Tim Bowling, in describing what you hope to achieve. He said: "I want to face the world with so much grace that the world would always know my love of it." In your stories, Flesh and Blood, lives lived above ground in the small Newfoundland mining town, Black Rock, the recurring theme of love comes through. Sometimes often painful love, how it endures in the face of obstacles such as estrangement, exile and misunderstanding. Would you care to comment? How does this tie in to what you've said about Tim Bowling and your notion of why you write?
MC:
Well, I think the reason that Tim's words struck me in a particular way is because there are good writers I don't enjoy reading because it seems to me that they dislike the things they are writing about. Or they look down upon the people and places they are writing about. Or they're exploiting the people and things they are writing about. And that's something that I've never wanted to do in my own writing. I think when I'm writing at my best . . . what I hope I'm doing is honoring the things I'm writing about in some way. Even when they are difficult things. Many of the stories in Flesh and Blood are not about very pleasant things. People aren't particularly happy. But in trying to write about them honestly, I hope what I'm doing is honoring their experience of the world. And the pain that they are experiencing in being in the world.
LF:
That's very beautiful. Something you might hear from someone who's been writing for 110 years. Very powerful. You've always thought that way, obviously.
MC:
Not consciously. But I think that when I look back…
LF:
And that's why writing is a meditation.
MC:
I think so. Yeah.
LF:
Wallace Stevens said that the poet is the priest of the invisible. That's really what you're doing, isn't it? Looking until you see and understand. And trying to best reflect that truth.
MC:
Yeah, I'm thinking now of Lisa Moore's latest book, Open, which is a fabulous book, an incredibly moving book, partly because what each of her stories does is honor the experience of this place, St. John's, the people here. And she's just trying to see it clearly. And speak about it in a way that honors the experience of people who live here.
LF:
Michael, you've had quite a few jobs on the way to becoming a writer. What did you find most interesting? Was there anything you felt tuned up your antennae?
MC:
I don't know if there was anything in particular. You know the old cliche, a writer's always working. I think that's true for me. Everything that happens around me feels like it could wind up being used. You know, especially if I'm working on something pretty intensely. I remember Carol Shields talking about this, how when she's working on something, it seems like the exact thing she needs comes along. And she's not airy-fairy enough to think of that as the world offering it to her or anything. To her, it's because her antennae are up and she's looking for exactly what she needs.

To read the rest of this interview with Michael Crummey by Leo Furey click here.

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Hard Light: 32 Little Stories by Michael Crummey, narrated by Michael Crummey, Ron Hynes and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings is available in audio from Rattling Books as either an Audio CD or Digital Download from rattlingbooks.com.

Je sais que nous devons avoir ses livres: Mavis Gallant in Paris

In Paris with Mavis Gallant, Writer
from The Walrus
July 2007
Randy Boyagoda

“M’excuser, monsieur. Je cherche des livres par Mavis Gallant. Où peux-je les trouver?” I asked the bookseller my question and then braced for his answer. This was an upmarket bookstore in Montparnasse, after all, and I was fumbling at the counter with Ontario schoolboy French. If my prior encounters in Paris were a reliable guide, my effort would be met with a practised combination of annoyance, pity, amusement, and withering contempt. But this time proved different. The bookseller ignored how rudely I had chewed through his native tongue.

“Pardon. Je sais que nous devons avoir ses livres, mais nous ne les avons pas,” he said in a sheepish, apologetic way, as if he were acknowledging a failure of literary responsibility. He knew he ought to have Mavis Gallant’s books on offer, but he didn’t. I would expect an exchange like this in a Canadian bookstore, but it was surprising here, in Paris, in Gallant’s own neighbourhood, in a city she’s been living in for some five decades. I was about to meet her at a restaurant across the street and had ducked into the book­store, curious to see where, not if, Gallant was placed on the shelves. She had chosen the restaurant and agreed to a conversation on a Sunday afternoon this past October through a correspondence that had stretched over a year. Though eighty-four, frail by her own admission, and exhausted from participating in two recently filmed documentaries about her life and work, she eventually agreed to my request [...]

To read the entire article, follow this link.

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The unabridged audio edition of Mavis Gallant's short story collection, Montreal Stories (published as Varieties of Exile in the United States), is narrated by Margot Dionne and published by Rattling Books.

Mavis Gallant Featured in The Paris Review's Art of Fiction

The Art of Fiction No. 160
from The Paris Review
Winter 1999

INTERVIEWER: Does it bother you that there are true stories that you’ll never put down?

GALLANT: It depends on what you call a true story. A journalism student in Germany once told me she was bothered by the fact that the most plain and simple and ordinary news stories could conceal an important falsehood. She gave me an example, say, a couple celebrating their seventieth wedding anniversary. They will sit holding hands for the photographer and they’ve had their ups and downs over the years, but the marriage has been a happy one. The reporter can only repeat what they say. But what if the truth is that they positively hate each other? In that case, the whole interview is a lie. I told her that if she wanted to publish the lie perceived behind the interview, she had to write fiction. (She became a critic, by the way.)

To see The Paris Review's page on Mavis Gallant, follow this link.

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The unabridged audio edition of Mavis Gallant's short story collection, Montreal Stories (published as Varieties of Exile in the United States), is narrated by Margot Dionne and published by Rattling Books.

Bookslut Chats Up Michael Winter

The Big Why: A Conversation with Michael Winter
from Bookslut.com
February 2006

My initial interest in Michael Winter’s The Big Why was primarily because its subject, Rockwell Kent, is an American artist that I actually can identify. When I worked at a bookstore in Fairbanks, Alaska, Kent’s small and elegant book, N by E was always popular with the tourists. Aside from his trip to the Last Frontier that the book was based on however, I really didn’t know that much about Kent’s work or his personal life. That fact that Winter chose to write about Kent through the guise of historical fiction made it seem much more approachable to me, and less intimidating. Having Michael Ondaatje’s ringing endorsement on the cover, (“A wild and bravely written novel that shatters the spine of ‘historical fiction’.”), didn’t hurt much either.

On the surface, Winter’s novel is about the period in Kent’s life when at the age of thirty he decided to leave New York City behind and settle with his wife and three children in the remote area of Brigus, Newfoundland. He was hoping to get away from the superficial nature of the city and find the quiet wonder that he believed existed in Newfoundland. Most of the appeal for Brigus was based on Bob Bartlett, the famous arctic explorer who had captained Robert Peary’s ship on his successful journey to the North Pole. Kent had heard Bartlett speak years before and then became friends with him and was so taken with the kind of man that he was, with his total lack of artifice and obvious deep love for his home, that Kent could not forget it. He believed he would find something that his life was lacking by moving to Brigus. Finally, in 1914, he convinced his wife Kathleen to give it a try. Then he packed his art supplies and left for the North, with his family planning to follow, after he had secured a home [...]

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

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Coming soon from Rattling Books: an unabridged audio edition of The Big Why, Michael Winter's dazzling reinvention of the historical novel—a passionate and witty faux memoir of Rockwell Kent, the famous illustrator of Moby Dick. Narrated by Robert Joy.