Diaspora Dialogues

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Diaspora Dialogues

Second Session of the Mentoring Program Is in Full Swing!

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Whereas our original program mentored one short story or up to five poems, the new program focuses on mentoring and developing full-length manuscripts, including novels, short story collections and poetry.

Our inaugural participants—writers Sheila Murray, Pratap Reddy, Adam Elliott Segal, Sanjay Talreja, Julia Zarankin, Marni Van Dyk, Becky Blake, and poets Anya Douglas and Yaya Yao—spent six months working intensively, one-on-one, with their mentors via correspondence. Their trusty mentors were Cynthia Holz, Shyam Selvadurai, Moez Surani and Olive Senior.

By the end of the session, each had completed one full new draft. This is no small feat!

The latest session has just started with a brand-new crop of emerging writers, including Manini Sheker, Joanne Vannicola, Mia Herrera, Derek Mascarenhas, and Deepa Shankaran. They are working with mentors Martin Mordecai, Cynthia Holz, and David Layton.

We’re pleased to have them join the program, and we can’t wait to see what great work they’re going to produce . . . 

To see more of Toronto’s best emerging writers, go here.

Interested in the mentorship program? Read more about it here. The next call for submissions will be going out soon. Sign up for our newsletter to receive it directly, or keep watching this space!

Emerging Author of the Month: Sanjay Talreja

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Tell us about yourself.

I am a Toronto-based documentary film-maker, originally from India. I write, direct and edit documentaries and have also recently worked in independent drama projects, including writing scripts for features and shorts. My main interest is in social and political films—broadly defined. I’ve also taught film-related classes at various institutions.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

I wrote Homecoming as a creative assignment for a class I took in film school in the US in 1988. It was a short story that came out of my own interests based on the lives of older people, particularly how they were almost invisible. If they were mentioned at all, older people appeared vague and ghostly in the already marginalised stories of immigrants—the edges of the margins, as it were.

Perhaps because I was close to my grandfather, I sensed that something valuable was missing. It seemed to me then, as it does to this day, that older immigrants come to foreign countries with the bulk of their experience and history behind them. Having gone through already full lives in their home countries, they are much more ambiguous about moving to a new country at this life stage; yet, once they are here, they are expected to just get on with it. It is as if the past does not matter. This is what I wanted to explore in this story.

Over the years, Homecoming went through many changes. I decided to write a feature length script out of it but felt that I needed to write a longer story in order to better know the characters and their situations. It went through different incarnations: a 55 page story, a 120 feature length script, then, a 12 page condensed short story and finally, now it has become a novella. I constantly seek to weave in current events in order to make the story more relevant.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I can’t think of a time when I haven’t wanted to write. I’ve been writing scripts and short stories since my late teens. It always felt, however, that while my scripts were for larger public presentations, my stories were privately written, only for myself. I’ve filed a whole drawer full of mostly incomplete fictional work, never thinking that I’d like to have them finished or published. It was only recently that I decided to try to get them out into the world.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

I have tremendous respect for authors who don’t consciously seek out to write something as `grand’ as literature. These authors write for wider audiences but are not writing pulp and continue to be interested in writing a novel without compromising their craft or what they are trying to say. Anton Chekhov, Munshi Premchand, Amitav Ghosh, R.K. Narayan, Somerset Maugham, Marquez, Orhan Pamuk, Roberto Bolaño, Vikram Seth . . . the list could go on and on.

Of late, I’ve enjoyed many of the Scandinavian crime and thrillers. Those writers make the crime and the detective form the core of the novel. Yet, context and history is so skillfully woven that as readers, we not only learn about how and if the crime is solved, but find ourselves learning about a constantly evolving, politically charged world that the characters find themselves in.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

For me, it is ordinary people who are the most interesting. How they come to be where they are, how they are simultaneously victims of larger events and are yet not crushed or fully formed by those forces—it is that world I want to explore.

Their personal tales and fables, their voices, desires, ambivalence, traits and idiosyncracies . . . amidst current events, history, are all part of what interests me. At the same time, I do not want my writing to be ponderous and heavy. I want to write stories where a discerning smile appears on the reader’s face, and the sting in the tail further enhances the pleasure.

How and when do you find time to write?

I work as an independent film-maker and editor and go through busy periods and also through slow times. I typically write when things are a little quiet on the film front and where I am waiting to hear from broadcasters, commissioning editors or conducting research. But I also know that if I don’t write for a few days, my fingers start itching and I get a little irritable. To keep my juices flowing, I always write short notes and ideas in a book.

Author of the Month: Marcia Johnson

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m a bit of a late bloomer. The older I get, the more confident I feel of my abilities and the more deserving I feel of success. In my younger years, the slightest disappointment or routine rejection would set me back for months or years. I’m happy to say that I’m now much better at letting things roll off my back.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I’ve always dreamed of writing. I loved books that came in series such as the Anne Shirley, Little House, and Narnia books. As a child, my goal was to write about my own series. Ten years into my acting career, I had the opportunity to collaborate on original pieces. This gave me the urge to write on my own.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

Lynn Nottage is one of my favourite playwrights. She writes about such difficult and painful things like the plight of women in the Congo (Ruined) without ‘beating up’ the audience. She shows respect for the topic but folds in much-needed comedy and subplots.

I’m also a huge fan of Tony Kushner for his masterpiece Angels in America plays. This fantastical play addressed AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia in the eighties. These were issues dear to his heart and he shared them brilliantly.

How and when do you find time to write?

I like to write first thing in the morning before I talk myself out of it.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

I learned the hard way to not read reviews.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

I’m much better at writing dialogue and creating distinct voices for different characters. In my earlier work, the lead character (always based on me) had a lot of monologues and tended to have the last word. I hope that my interactions are more realistic now.

Author of the Month: Catherine Graham

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m a writer, creative writing teacher, writing coach, editor and workshop leader. I live in Toronto and am the author of four collections of poetry, including a poetry trilogy: Pupa, The Red Element, and Winterkill (Insomniac Press). My next collection, Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects will appear fall, 2013 with Wolsak & Wynn.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

Having lost both parents during my undergraduate years at McMaster University I was in the throes of grief when my therapist suggested I keep a journal to release my feelings. It was during this time I began playing with words. One day I worked up the courage to show my efforts to a close friend, a teacher who was older than me. She immediately saw what I couldn’t—I was writing poetry. Since that moment of realization I haven’t stopped writing. I often wonder if my parents hadn’t died if I would still be a writer.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

After completing my MA in Creative Writing in Northern Ireland, I continued to live there for several years. Many of the writers I encountered had an impact on me. Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Paula Meehan, Carol Ann Duffy, Derek Mahon, Paul Durcan, Joan Newmann, Eavan Boland, and Brendan Kennelly are just some that come to mind.

How and when do you find time to write?

I always try to maintain a link to my writing life whether it’s scribbling a few random observations in my notebook while in transit somewhere, or at my desk when I have more time to immerse myself in bigger projects. If I don’t make some kind of connection to my inner life I feel disconnected to myself and my surroundings.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

One of the biggest challenges is to believe in your work and your vision. Writing, like the other arts, follows trends. What’s in/what’s out. Who’s in/who’s out. I try to stay away from this way of thinking by being true to my own way with words and yet still be open to take in the new; to be fluid like water and firm like stone; to somehow maintain that balance.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

Writing, like life, has its ups and downs. Part of the challenge is to ride these ups and downs and not get caught up in praise/rejection. The constant thing is the act of writing—me and the page and the words that unfold.

Emerging Author of the Month: Pratap Reddy

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Tell us about yourself.

I immigrated to Canada in 2002. After the usual ‘rites-of-passage’ struggles as an immigrant, I got a decent job as an underwriter in a Canadian insurance company. I had always harboured a desire to write, and the varied experiences a newcomer goes through in this country became a convenient starting point for me. While still working at my day job (writing is not a paying profession, at least not for upcoming authors), I continue to write. My stories are being published in anthologies and periodicals, even if they are not topnotch ones. I won the Mississauga Arts Council grant for the ‘Best Emerging Literary Artist.’ I found this really reassuring since I had the audacity to dream of becoming a writer—a bit late in life. Besides this honour, I received a grant from Ontario Arts Council, and was selected by Diaspora Dialogues for their short fiction and later for the longform mentorship programs.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

This excerpt is from an unpublished short story—it chronicles the first few days in an immigrant’s life, just after landing in Canada. The culture shock, the ground realities of employment opportunities, and the adjustment one has to make to one’s outlook of life. Though written in a lighter vein, the fictional piece touches on some of the problems new immigrants face.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

For me, wanting to write was the natural outcome of my love of reading, being forever under the enchantment of books. Back home in India there was a strong colonial influence of Britain in the books which were available, and no literature abounds in escapist fiction more than the English language. Abetted by my parents who put a premium on reading, I lost myself in the magical world of literature. There seemed no profession more wondrous than that of a writer’s, and is it a surprise that I longed to be one?

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

I devoured British detective fiction, and in my teens I loved the works of Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Josephine Tey almost to distraction. Among the mainstream writers, I enjoyed reading Somerset Maugham, and Muriel Spark. I also read books of Indians writing in English, the two I admired most were Raja Rao and Kamala Markandaya, especially the latter who wrote—half a century ago—a remarkable novel about the predicament of Indian diaspora called The Nowhere Man (such an appropriate title, I think).

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

I want to be a writer who writes about the milieu he knows best, to write about the subject in a way that’s both incisive and entertaining. While presently I write about the immigrant experience (even the novel I’m working on has echoes of it), in future I would also like to write about India, my home country, on the effect of modernization and the growing, but skewed, prosperity.

How and when do you find time to write?

It must be a little shopworn, my joke about being an underwriter by day and a writer by night. Even with a full time day job, and a family to support, you will somehow find time (late in the night or early in the morning)—if you love to write.

Author of the Month: Andrew Pyper

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Tell us about yourself.
I was born in Stratford, Ontario, forty-four years ago, to parents who were recent immigrants to Canada from Northern Ireland. From as soon as I learned handwriting, I’ve been writing stories. It was never seen as a potential career, it was just something I did because I liked it, and because it afforded me a special privacy, a safe place from the bruises and shames of everyday life. Somewhere along the line, I wrote a novel which was published in a lot of places and I’ve been writing novels full-time since then. These days I live in Toronto with my family, and silently pray for things to stay as they are as much as possible.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

Even though I have three brothers and a sister, because I was youngest of the bunch by a number of years, I was a de facto only child growing up. They say isolation and/or illness are great motivators for writers, and I don’t know if that’s true, but having few playmates in my first years certainly forced me to entertain myself. For me, that entertainment was always storytelling. Fake radio shows, monster movies, DIY hardcovers. I was a one-kid content provider. As for the “why,” I’d say it was the simple pleasure of the thing. It’s still the reason I do it.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The Shining by Stephen King. The Progress of Love by Alice Munro. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The Information by Martin Amis. But these are only off-the-top-of-my-head today. Ask me tomorrow and you’d get a different (though no less true) answer.

How and when do you find time to write?

I’m lucky enough to be able to write fiction full-time, so I just go up to my home office, Monday to Friday, and wrestle with sentences.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

Oh, the usual. Rejection, rejection, no job security, rejection, dumb reviewers, rejection, severe income drops, rejection and, often, rejection. It’s not a great job for those who are sensitive to or over-analyze every—wait for it—rejection.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

I’m more of a planner, an idea-tester, a concept teaser. Sentences remain a primary concern, but I feel like I’ve largely found my way when it comes to the lines and how to build them (this took a long time though!) As I go along, the book’s architecture, its concept, its “way in,” takes up more of my head space than it used to.

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