Gabriella
Goliger's
latest novel is Eva Salomon's War, published by Bedazzled Ink Publishing of
Fairfield, California. Her first book, Song of Ascent (Raincoast Books),
a collection of linked short stories, won the 2001 Upper Canada Writer's Craft
Award. Her novel Girl Unwrapped (Arsenal Pulp Press) won the City of
Ottawa 2011 Literary Award for Fiction.
She was co-winner of the 1997 Journey Prize for short fiction and a
finalist for this prize in 1995 and she won the Prism International award in
1993. She has also been published in a number of journals and anthologies
including Best New American Voices 2000 (Harcourt Inc.), Contemporary
Jewish Writing in Canada (University of Nebraska Press) and The New Spice Box: Canadian Jewish Writing
(The New Jewish Press).
Q:
How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I've
lived in Ottawa since 1978, having moved here from Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit),
Baffin Island. By then, I'd spent a year and a half in the North, working part
of that time for the local newspaper. One of my friends moved to Ottawa and,
upon visiting her in May, I fell in love with the place. Ottawa had busy bike
paths and flowering tulips in May. Frobisher Bay was still still covered in ice
and snow. Ottawa seemed balmy by comparison. (It no longer seems so balmy to
me. I spend my winters in Victoria, BC, now.)
Q: How did you first get involved in
writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
Most of my money-earning years were
spent as a journalist or pen-for-hire, but that's not creative writing as we
know it. My real entry into the craft was through a course I took at Ottawa U.
with Frances Itani. She and other teachers inspired me, but by then I was also
itching to do my own work. It was also through Frances' classes that I met
other aspirants who became my fellow travellers during the long journey of
“becoming a writer.” And this led us to form a very long-lived writers group.
The late Danuta Gleed was one of the
members and a friend. (Her husband John Gleed set up a short story writing
award in her name.) The writers group
was my main community, but I also met other writers over time.
Q: How did being in such a community
of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
Having a supportive community helped
my stick-to-it-ness. The writers group encouraged me to take my work seriously,
but at the same time challenged me to reach for more, plumb the depths more,
not be satisfied with less than my best attempt.
Q: What do you see happening here
that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Since I've lived in Ottawa throughout
my days as a fiction writer, I can't comfortably compare it to other places. I
am certainly aware that the city does much for the arts. For example, our
annual literary awards. I don't think many (if any) other Canadian cities have
an equivalent. Also our international festival, local events, venues,
publishers, etc.
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?
For all its comforts and loveliness, Ottawa
has never featured in any of my fiction except for one short story, and then
only obliquely. Ottawa is a great place for my daily life, but my creative
imagination takes me to other times and places. Receiving a City of Ottawa
Literary Award helped spur me to start a new novel. But I can't say I've
changed my approaches as a result of living here.
Q:
What are you working on now?
A
novel set in 1920s Weimar Germany about a love affair between a Jewish woman and
a German woman and their very different responses to the gay and lesbian
underground subculture of the era. (I'm still in the beginning stages.)
