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Diaspora Dialogues

Emerging Author of the Month: David Cozac

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Tell us about yourself.

I was born and raised in Toronto, and studied English Literature at the University of Windsor (B.A.) and Queen’s University (M.A.). I have long loved reading and books, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would eventually get around to writing one of my own. Professionally, my career has centred on human rights communications and program management, both in Canada and overseas.

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

This is an excerpt from Finishing the Road. Set in Guatemala in 1991, while the country’s civil war still continues, the novel tells three stories of individuals who’ve travelled through the country searching for and contemplating family, identity and belonging in a world in which they have come to feel estranged. One of the protagonists, a woman named Claire who is part Belgian and part Guatemalan (due to a fleeting affair that her mother had while travelling in Guatemala) travels to the country to meet the father she never met (but whom she had recently spoken to by telephone). However, he is murdered before she has an opportunity to see him in person. She chooses to remain in the country, travelling to several places in the country that had particular meaning for him and that he had told her to visit. She does so, writing personal, impressionistic accounts for an English-language newspaper in the country, using the motif of the rare and beautiful quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala. In travelling to, writing about and experiencing these places first-hand, Claire hopes to learn more not just about her biological father but also about her Guatemalan half.

One of the other main characters in Finishing the Road is a Torontonian, Marc, who is in Guatemala to study Spanish. When he accidentally comes across the first newspaper article by Claire, he is instantly drawn to her and impetuously decides to embark upon his own journey in Guatemala, letting her words be the guide, tracing her steps through every article that she writes. His is in a quest—unwittingly led by her—done in the hope of stepping into his own life and grounding his drifting soul, one that has never felt rooted in his hometown.

The excerpt is an article by Claire about one of those places where she travels: a remote Mayan village called Lancetillo.

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

As mentioned, I have enjoyed reading for a long time. However, it was only after I had returned to Canada in 2000, after having lived and worked in Guatemala for a couple of years, that the need to write came to the fore. I came back armed with so many experiences and memories from my time there that I felt the need to channel them. So, I eventually decided to write a novel, which, while a work of fiction, does contain some elements based on people I know, stories I heard and places I visited.

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

I have been lucky enough to read a wide range of great literature by writers from around the world. If I were to select certain writers whose work has had a significant impact on me (and my writing), I would point to Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel García Márquez. With Harrison, he is simply an incredible storyteller with a gigantic heart and unyielding love for the world. McCarthy is a master of language and scenery. My single favourite novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was my introduction to García Márquez.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

I suppose that I aspire to be a writer who is faithful to his vision and who writes with passion and conviction about it.

How and when do you find time to write?

I have to make time to write; otherwise, it won’t get done. For example, when I beganFinishing the Road a couple of years ago, I found that I was not making much progress. It was particularly difficult because I had a full-time job. Being at home was also a distraction, given the easy access to the Internet, television, etc. So, I joined the Toronto Writers’ Centre and went there every Saturday and Sunday over the course of almost a year. The TWC provided an ideal, distraction-free quiet space in which I managed to complete my manuscript. It involved a great deal of discipline on my part; however, because I was determined to complete the novel, I made the effort to spend weekends at the centre.

Giving Made Easy

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Diaspora Dialogues is committed to programming events featuring diverse speakers, artists and intellectuals. We ensure that our events are easily accessible by providing free admission or an affordable ticket price. In order for us to continue to do this, we need your support!

DD has just established a charitable pooling account with Aeroplan, into which anyone can donate points without incurring transfer fees. We understand that points take a long time to accumulate and can be hard to part with; however, we would be most grateful if you would consider making a donation. With your generous support, DD will be able to use donated points for airfare to bring writers and artists from diverse backgrounds to our Toronto events—a new requirement of our federal funding—as well as begin to expand our work to other Canadian cities.

In April 2013, DD and the Literary Review of Canada will launch Canada’s first national festival of politics, art and ideas. A mix of discussions, town halls, readings, performances, walking tours and place-specific artistic presentations will feature Canadian and global writers, artists, thinkers, filmmakers, cultural curators, politicians, academics, journalists, and others. Celebrating Canada’s history, while building towards our sesquicentennial in 2017, Spur will be an annual festival designed to engage Canadians in a feisty, nation-wide search for ways to advance on the most current of issues. It will be multi-partisan, forward-looking and solutions oriented.

Stay tuned for when we publicly announce the festival in weeks to come!

Please help us spur this national, linked conversation by donating points—in any amount—to make this large country a little more accessible to our work.

To donate your points, visit here.

To learn more about our Aeroplan donation recognition levels visit here.

Markham Tales

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Come take a walk with us down memory lane on Main Street, Unionville, as tales from the past come to life right before your eyes. Performed by professional actors and musicians in collaboration with the community, this site-specific spectacle will travel through time and lead us into the future of this storied street.

Meet us at the Unionville Millenium Bandstand to take the tour, and then join us for a FREE panel discussion and reception at the Varley Art Gallery! The panel discussion will feature visual artist Xiaojing Yan, poet Sheniz Janmohamed, and other cultural community leaders.

When: Sunday, February 24
Time: Theatrical promenade performance begins at 2 pm; Panel discussion & reception begins a 3:15 pm
Where: Main Street, Unionville
Cost: Tour: $15 general admission, $10 students & seniors. Panel discussion: FREE

Tickets are limited, reserve your spot here.

Download and listen to an audio clip for a sneak peek here.

Markham Tales originally created by FIXT POINT for Diaspora Dialogues, written by Lisa Marie DiLiberto.

Author of the Month: Cherie Dimaline

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Tell us about yourself.

My name is Cherie Dimaline and this year I’ll be 38. Yipes! That’s crazy; I have no idea how that happened. First and foremost, in everything that I do, I have to properly introduce myself. I am Metis/Anishnaabe on my mother’s side. My family’s Metis roots travelled from the original Red River settlement where my ancestors fought alongside Louis Riel, and my Anishnaabe family roots stretched from communities along the journey from Manitoba to where we are now, near Christian Island First Nation on Lake Huron. My grandmother spoke her language and raised us to evolve, grow and succeed within the strength of our indigenous worldview. I am who I am because of the people who came before me.

In 2007, my book of short stories Red Rooms was published by Theytus Books, an amazing Aboriginal publishing house out of BC. After that, everything changed; I travelled the world, people wanted to hear me read my words out loud at podiums and on panels and I could call myself an honest-to-god author. Then again, nothing changed. I still had to work a day job and sometimes I paid my rent with an American Express card. But that’s writing, I guess, it really cannot be for anything other than the love of it. Anyways, now I am the editor of several magazines: Muskrat and FNH (First Nations House), and this year I’ll also be taking over the reins at a national in-print Aboriginal magazine. I recently contributed to a gothic anthology that Joyce Carol Oates tweeted about (yes, I am such a nerd that I am including a tweet in my bio). I’ve also penned a children’s book for on-reserve elementary schools, contributed to two new McGraw Hill-Ryerson textbooks for high school English students and have had the honour of being invited to present my work as part of an exhibit at the Museum of Civilization in Hull this coming summer. My first full length novel The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy will be released this spring and I’ll get to travel the world all over again. This novel was written half here in Canada and half in New Orleans, a city I have grown to love. It’s a city where anything can happen. For example, New Orleans is where I met my best friend, even though her reserve is really close to my home community on the Georgian Bay and we’d both lived in Toronto for more than a decade in the same urban Aboriginal community. I also have another book of short stories in the barrel and will start sending that out into the world looking for a publisher this year.

I have three kids between the ages of 20 and 6 and I collect teacups, books and tattoos.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

It was definitely the first time I saw words embedded in paper in my hand-me-down collection of Dr. Seuss books. I was rabid to learn them, to figure them out, to employ them. That sounds far-fetched, but honestly, I knew I wanted to create and play with stories before I could read. I guess the real passion started messing with my life shortly thereafter when I’d gotten in trouble in class for writing stories when I was supposed to be learning math. My mom would have to kick me out of the house to play “like a normal kid” when I was young. One day, I wrote an entire story on the bottoms of my shoes with a pen I had stuck in my hair on one of those ‘get out of the house’ excursions. I had to ride my bike home on the sides of my feet so it wouldn’t smudge. Writing is something that has never been far from my thoughts and feelings. I greedily steal moments and fragments from my life and others so that I can write about it later. I have been known to stop in the middle of an important event to write about it. (Confession: I wrote on my wedding day and while in labour with all 3 of my kids.)

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

There have been so many writers that have impacted me over the years. I have a series of tattoos I like to call my ‘nerd sleeve’ that pays homage to several of them. It is comprised of Anaïs Nin, Charles Bukowski, and Hunter S. Thompson. And while I may not have the same style as any of them, each of these writers demonstrated on a daily basis a commitment to the art of literature that was theological. That is what inspires me; handing over your entire soul to the craft of words and communication. There are other people, non-writers, who give me the same kind of inspiration; people who live to serve their art. A recent example would be from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary about an 85-year-old sushi master who has worked every day at making sushi for over 6 decades. Every day. As the title suggests, he even dreams of sushi, and never once, has he ever hated or grown bored of his job. That’s dedication. With one phrase: “In order to make delicious food, one must eat delicious food. Otherwise, how will you get the palate to know good from bad?” He has inspired me to be better by being more studious and diverse so that I can improve my writing.

That being said, if there were only two pieces of writing I could suggest in terms of the way they slide between my ribs like a blade and crack open my chest to get to my heart the quickest, they’d have to be “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot and “heat” by Charles Bukowski. Interestingly enough, they are both poems, and I am no poet. But great writing is great writing.

How and when do you find time to write?

Sleep is optional. LOL! Seriously though, you MUST make time. I’m trying to think of an apt metaphor here, and I suppose the only way I could equate it would be—a child who grows the strongest, the most well-rounded and prepared to face the world is the one you give time, love and guidance. It’s the same with the projects and jobs of your life. The ones you have invested with your time and energy will always be the ones that take centre stage. If you really want to be a writer, the kind of writer that truly makes a go of it, you MUST give your writing centre stage. It’s not going to be easy; I have 4 jobs and 3 kids and all of them are quite lovely and successful in their own ways, but I have to make time for writing, even if it means scribbling out notes on the back of a menu or skipping a night out at the end of a long week so that I can hash out a character’s back story. It’s damn hard work, and it’s worth every second.

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

Doubt. It is a writer’s worst enemy. Collect your rejection letters and then start a bonfire. Learn what you can from mentors, experts and bestsellers, and then do better. Take criticism into consideration but never let it dampen your own fire, and be prepared to fight for it.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

I cringe when I think of the highly romanticized drivel I used to write, like Jean Paul Sartre says in Nausea: “scribbling like a little girl with a nice new notebook.” But, we all have to go through it I suppose. I am a better writer now because I have come to appreciate that my vision is great, my style is unique and important, BUT there are rules to the craft of writing. And even if you choose to break those rules, you better know them first and that it is a conscious decision and not just an oversight. I read more widely and I study every day. If there is a sentence I like, I write it out in my own handwriting and pull it apart. If there is someone writing in a style similar to mine, I read them and find where we intersect and where we part and make sure that what we do similarly—I am doing it better. Most importantly, I trust my writing self, that’s the biggest change. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good editor—I just had the absolute pleasure of working with New York Times bestseller Eden Robinson on Girl Who Grew a Galaxy. I take direction, but also trust the direction I take and I always give merit to the original thought. In the past, I would crumble and cave under advice and criticism and it never worked out.

Emerging Author of the Month: Becky Blake

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m a fiction writer who has worked as a journalist, a script consultant, an advice columnist, and a playwright. My short stories and articles are often inspired by my travels around the world. I’m a recent graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. I currently live in Toronto where I’m working on my first novel.

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

The piece is a short excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Yours to Keep. Barcelona is my favourite city in the world (so far!) and this novel was born out of the many impressions I came away with after living there. The book is about a Canadian woman who suffers a loss shortly after moving to Spain and ends up living on the streets, where she apprentices with a pickpocket. This excerpt shows her assisting in her first theft.

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

According to my mom, my first word was ‘book,’ and I think a passion for reading and a passion for writing are often connected. The first story I wrote that garnered attention was called “Seaweed Soufflé.” It was about an underwater dinner party; I wrote it in Grade 1 and I’ve been writing pretty much ever since then. Growing up, my favourite place to hang out was always the library. I know a couple of writers who don’t read very much, but most of us read like our lives depended on it.

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

Wow. This is going to be quite a long list! When I was a young teen I remember being given Judy Blume books as a reward when I did well in school or had something scary to tackle. Her books were always provocative and important to me. As an older teen, I was reading Leonard Cohen, Barbara Gowdy, Michael Ondaatje, Heinrich Böll, J. D. Salinger, Allen Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath. Then I became an actress for a few years and I read a lot of plays: Shakespeare and Chekhov were my favourites. When I began to focus more seriously on the craft of writing, I fell in love with many of the usual suspects: Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. Then, I spent a year reading only female writers and my most significant discoveries from that exercise were the works of Angela Carter, Marguerite Duras, and Jean Rhys. My favourite contemporary writers over the last two years have been Francisco Goldman, Sarah Hall, Junot Díaz, and Daniel Alarcón.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

The kind who learns how to write better and faster so I can share as many stories as possible.

How and when do you find time to write?

I write in the morning. I used to meditate in the morning and then start writing, but after a while I realized that writing is a form of meditation in itself, so now I just get right to it. At my day job, I’ve been working only afternoons for several years now and it’s a sacrifice that feels right to me: to have a little less money and more time to write.

Author of the Month: Andrew K. Borkowski

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Tell us about yourself.

I was born and raised in Toronto’s Polish community on Roncesvalles Avenue, studied Journalism and English at Carleton University, spent eight or nine years after that working odd jobs, doing bits of theatre and freelance journalism. I spent two years in England learning how not to write a novel, then came back to Toronto where I settled into making a living as a freelance journalist and editor. I kept writing fiction throughout this time—short stories which began appearing in quarterlies in the late 1990s and eventually evolved into Copernicus Avenue, a collection of linked stories about Roncesvalles which was published by Cormorant Books in 2011 and won the Toronto Book Award in 2012. I’ve pursued music as a sideline, serving as vocalist, keyboard player and occasional song writer for a local blues/jazz ensemble The Grayceful Daddies.

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

“By the Bath House” is the first story I ever wrote and revised to a finished state. It’s set on Sunnyside Beach in the shadow of the bathing pavilion which, in those days, was in a pretty decrepit state. “Bath House” was never published, but I read a bit of it to a CBC reporter covering an event for would-be authors at the Harbourfront. The clip, and a short interview, was broadcast on CBC Radio’s Morningside. The host at the time was Don Harron, who said “He sounds honest, he sounds dedicated, I think he’ll make it.” The reporter commented that she thought I used too many adjectives.

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

Very early. At age six I was filling notebooks with half-invented accounts of “My Adventures.” The first time I ever thought I’d like to make a career of writing was on a family visit to the Leacock Home in Orillia when I was about twelve. I remember standing in the room where Stephen Leacock did his writing, in a boat house overlooking Lake Couchiching, and thinking, “This would be a cool way to spend your life—sitting in a place like this, just dreaming things up.” Not long after that, I started writing little science fiction stories which my Grade 8 teacher Mr. Davis would read aloud to the class every Friday afternoon. It made me quite the popular guy.

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

D.H. Lawrence was the first “serious” writer I remember having an impact on me. Older people still thought of him as a writer of “dirty books,” but I was turned on by his descriptions of nature and the sheer force and passion of his writing. My high school had a superb English department whose teachers had a knack for turning writers such as J.D. Salinger, Hemingway, and James Joyce into cult figures that rivalled rock stars. Joyce’s Dubliners was a model for Copernicus Avenue. In recent years, I’ve been most influenced by the disciplined style of Raymond Carver, and by the early work of Italo Calvino, which has the whimsical quality of folk tales. I keep going back to Virginia Woolf, and Salman Rushdie, perhaps as an antidote to my minimalist bent. I don’t write anything like them, but I keep hoping they’ll rub off on me.

How and when do you find time to write?

I’ve freelanced for a living my whole career, so I’ve had to fit creative writing into periods between assignments. I like to have periods of at least a week—preferably more, as long as my bank balance will permit—to get up ahead of steam on a creative project. Ideally, I like to have two writing blocks in a day: 2-3 hours in the late morning and 2-3 hours in the late afternoon, with exercise, errands, and occasional lunch meetings in between. The best work usually gets done in the second block, but I need the first one to get the wheels turning. I’m a night owl but not so much for writing. Evenings are for events, reading, correspondence and the little stuff that goes with the business of being a writer.

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

The biggest challenge is how to keep body and soul together and still find time to write. There’s no easy solution: writing literary fiction doesn’t pay much. For the first decade of my career, I survived on what, today, we’d call “McJobs,” but after a while those menial occupations become mind-numbing. Freelancing as a journalist and editor was my solution; it gives you flexibility, though it requires a lot of your time and energy and it’s not getting easier to earn a living that way. There’s no perfect solution. If I were starting out today, I’d be looking for a career that gave me some stability and bought me an hour’s writing time for every hour on the job. It doesn’t have to be literary or intellectual in nature: carpentry or a private physiotherapy practice might do it—anything that gives you control of your schedule and pays decently.

The next big challenge is keeping faith in oneself and in one’s work. You learn to read rejection letters very subtextually for any encouragement you can find in them. You also learn to dismiss the “overnight success” stories the media are so fond of peddling and look for inspiration in writers like Carol Shields, who didn’t see success until she was in her forties. Overnight success is a great story, but it never happens in the arts.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

I don’t think of it as “changing as a writer” so much as it’s a process of discovering who you really are as a writer. The Copernicus Avenue stories are a case in point. Some people are lucky and they know right away—very often these are writers not-so-lucky people who’ve experienced some early trauma that’s forced them to grow up in a hurry. That wasn’t me. I spent the early part of my career trying to write like the writers I admired coming out of university—wildly experimental twentieth century writers like Burroughs, Beckett, and Woolf—until the writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library (M.T. Kelly) told me that the aspects of my work he liked had nothing to do with the writers I said I admired. Kelly put me on a strict diet of American minimalists and realists like Carver. Stylistically, that’s when I began to find the voice that would animate Copernicus. By the time I started to write those stories, my motto had become “Don’t be clever, don’t be cool, just tell the f***ing story.”

But finding the stories that are yours to tell can take time. I couldn’t possibly have written about my Polish heritage when I was in my twenties. The stories were staring me right in the face, but I didn’t have the maturity or the detachment to write them. At the time, it felt that they didn’t belong to me—they belonged to my parents. Writing the unsuccessful stories is what prepared me to write the ones that I felt I was always meant to tell. And it’s an ongoing thing. Now, I don’t necessarily feel that I’ve “found my voice.” It feels more as though I’ve penetrated the outer layer of what I’m meant to do as a writer, that I’ll keep changing as I go deeper.

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