Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I first moved to Ottawa in 2010, to attend school at the University of Ottawa. Since then, I’ve moved back and forth out of Ottawa and the area several times for education and employment. I most recently moved back to the area at the beginning of 2021 and moved to where I currently live (in the Aylmer area of Gatineau) in 2022.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I was originally from Cobourg, Ontario, a small but growing city on the shores of Lake Ontario, about an hour outside of Toronto. I was an avid reader from an early age, and first started showcasing my writing at readings at my high school and at local coffee shops, with the encouragement of a teacher. My earliest recognition came in the form of an award from a writing contest at the Cobourg Public Library.
When I first moved to Ottawa, I actually was not actively involved in writing for several years, as I was more focused on my studies and on other adventures such as debating and campus politics. But I’ve actually gotten more involved since moving back the area, especially through some friends of mine who are also writers.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
The initial manuscript for this novel given more shape by comments from a number of local readers, including my good friend Chuqiao Yang (who recently had a poetry book of her own published, which is nominated for an Ottawa Book Award!). One of the largest challenges in writing the novel that getting that feedback and input on helped with was getting the balance of character development and plot action right. The novel is on the shorter side and I struggled with making sure it was long enough to convey what I wanted to convey but short enough to be quick read and not overlong with subplots. There were some sections that I removed in the name of not being extraneous or adding incident for its own sake. The process of being in a community has helped me refine more as a writer, but also as a reader, in terms of knowing myself, my tastes and blindspots more, and being more comfortable writing from a direct place.
This is somewhat different than previous short stories that I have published tended more towards a dryer, understated style that I have written in since my initial high school exposure to Raymond Carver. Smaller Animals is my attempt to be more directly emotional vein and be more generous to my characters. Whether I succeeded in that is largely up to the reader to determine, but I don’t know I would have written in this way without community support.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Politics is often written about in terms of the top players, the Prime Ministers and Presidents, even though so much of the actual work takes place at the level of largely invisible and often-maligned staffers. This novel is an attempt to shed light on and humanize them, particularly those early in their careers who are the least likely to be known in and of themselves. It’s those sorts of experiences I could only have had in Ottawa that make the novel what it is. The ability to connect the literary with the political, as well as the unique blend of cultures, languages and experiences make Ottawa a special place I’ve continued coming back to.
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?
Smaller Animals is my first full-length novel, following a series of short story publications and poetry chapbooks. I have previously worked as a policy analyst and legislative assistant on Parliament Hill, within provincial and federal governments, as well as on a number of projects internationally. The novel is primarily informed by my experiences on the Hill, as well as being active in the political life of Ottawa as a city.
The first draft of the novel was written in 2019, during a time I was working on a development project overseas. The separation from my previous life in Ottawa gave me the chance to reflect on what the city and its people had meant to me and develop the themes and characters in the novel. I felt that I wanted to capture and preserve some of what had happened to me and my peers in a form that could speak to others.
Q: What are you working on now?
In turning my mind to future projects, I have an idea for a historical novel set around the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall that I’ve been considering writing for a long time. Perhaps having this initial novel published will be the spur that finally causes me to put pen to paper on it, but I feel like I should do more research on the topic first. I’m also continuing to write poetry and the occasional piece of creative non-fiction.
