Elizabeth Hay is the Giller
Prize-winning author of ten books, including five novels. Her latest work, All Things Consoled: a daughter’s memoir is a portrait of her mother and father
as they reach the end of their lives.
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what
first brought you here?
We moved here in 1992. For me it was a move back to Canada after
eight years of homesickness in Mexico and New York City. Ottawa was a
compromise between Toronto, where I knew people but didn’t want to
live, and Montreal, where I knew nobody except my brother and where my husband
Mark wanted to live, but I was less sure. Ottawa seemed a better choice for a
pair who were not bilingual.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and
subsequently, the writing community here?
I’ve
been writing since I was fifteen and publishing books since I was thirty-nine.
I should point out what you already know, that I’m not involved in Ottawa’s
writing community the way you are, rob. I was already in my early forties when
I moved here, and set in my solitary ways.
Ottawa has been a good
place for me because it’s out of the swim and people leave you alone. I
have writer friends, but we don’t talk much about our own writing; I find it
hard enough to write a book without having to talk about it too. What Ottawa
gives me is peace and quiet and eastern Ontario, especially the Ottawa Valley,
which resonates for me because my mother grew up in Renfrew. The whole area is
very alive for me in a personal and emotional way.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers
shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I think my community is books, meaning writers on the page rather
than in person. I’m always trying to learn how to be a better writer from the
books I read.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t
see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
There’s an Ottawa quality that suits me. It’s less competitive
than Toronto. It’s easier to forget about the market and literary fads and
reputations. Easier to forget about yourself and just get on with writing. In
that sense I find it easier to breathe here.
At the same time, it’s a relief to
travel east or west, and leave my Ontario self behind. I have a friend from the
Maritimes who has lived in Ottawa for many years. He moved his old parents from
New Brunswick into the same retirement place where my parents lived out the
last years of their lives. I was very struck by his parents’ reaction to the
stand-offish Ottawa folk in the residence who passed them in the corridors
without so much as a nod or smile or hello. The rank discourtesy and
unfriendliness of it! That’s why an evening last summer in Nova Scotia with a
group of six writers and artists around a table talking spontaneously, and with
real creative zest, left such an impression on me. I’m hungrier than I knew for
such conversation.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly
to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all,
changed the way you approached your work?
Ottawa has worked its way into every book I’ve written here, from Small
Change on through my five novels to the recent memoir about my parents. It’s
my place, my home. I’m very fond of it and I don’t know quite what to do with
myself when I’m away from my desk in my west-facing room in old Ottawa South.
Q: What are you working on now?
I’m
working on a novel.
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