Six Questions interview #241 : Rebecca Hirsch Garcia

Rebecca Hirsch Garcia lives in Ottawa, Ontario. 

An O. Henry award winning author, her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, PRISM international, swamp pink, The Dark and elsewhere.

Her debut collection, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories (ECW, 2023) was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award and was the runner up for the Danuta Gleed Literary award.

Her debut novel, Other Evolutions (ECW, 2025), was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award and won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction.

She can be found on instagram and blusky @rhirschgarcia

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

On my mom’s side I’m a second generation Ottawan. So I’ve always been here. And I’m pretty sedentary so I’m not going anywhere either.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

I’m one of those annoying writers who knew they were destined to write since childhood. Since before I was literate actually: I used to beg the kindergarten aides to write down the stories I told them (they very kindly obliged).

True to writerly form I tend to be a solitary creature but after my first book The Girl Who Cried Diamonds was nominated for an Ottawa Book Award writers in the community reached out to support me. It was very, very kind.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

I don’t know if they shifted my feelings about the actual business of writing but I did think that the positive example of Ottawa writers made me aware of what I owe to my community.

I’ve tried harder to show up in the way people have showed up for me. I’m still fairly solitary but I go to more book events, I read more books by Ottawa authors, I congratulate other writers when they are nominated or win awards, and I’ve been on more juries.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

I think that we’re so consumed by being the country’s capital that it doesn’t leave a ton of room for Ottawa to define itself in any other way. However being underestimated like that is quite delicious. I can be out here doing really weird work with absolutely zero pressure. It’s very freeing.

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?

I am always writing about Ottawa. It’s my home after all. And I find that it’s very neutrality and the fact that it has a reputation for being boring lends it the perfect backdrop to some of the eeriness I embrace in my work. My characters in some ways live very cushy lives so when that comfort is threatened the change feels more violent.

Q: What are you working on now?

I don’t like to talk about work in progress but let’s say I’m working on a novel. In between I’m working on short stories which I love and will never stop writing. The last one I wrote is a rat story that is so bizarre I fear it might be unpublishable. I made the mistake of telling people about it and now it’s all people ask me about. Where is the rat story? Why haven’t you published it yet? You got another rejection for the rat story? I thought you loved rats (I don’t) etc. I regret mentioning the rat story at all.

Six Questions interview #240 : Nadia Bozak

Nadia Bozak lives in Ottawa and teaches at Carleton University. Her latest novel, Fret, has recently been published by ECW.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

I moved here for a job opportunity, around 11-12 years ago.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

I started writing in a more professional sense in Toronto, where I lived for many years before moving to Ottawa. I met writers in Ottawa through my publisher at the time, as they kindly introduced me to Ottawa writers who published with their publishing house. I was also introduced to Ottawa-based writers through my job at Carleton, thanks to writers teaching in the English department. I am also lucky to be able to invite writers to speak to students in our department, so this is how I met many wonderful Ottawa writers, including a certain rob mclennan. I continue to find connection with writing communities in Ottawa via my students at Carleton. They are always up to interesting things, so I’m grateful to have a sense of what younger writers are doing to and learn from them.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

When I moved here and knew only a few people, and not many of them writers, I immediately realized that I had taken everything for granted that I had before, friends, connection, sense of home.  I realized how important artistic communities are, to have a sense that you are not alone in your pursuits, to exchange ideas with other writers, and share resources. Writers spend a lot of time alone, but a balance between practice and connection is essential.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

Ottawa writers are great at supporting each other and celebrating each other’s writing and achievements. We’re sandwiched between Toronto and Montreal, so that’s hard sometimes, but Ottawa is a unique place that produces writing with a distinct perspective. That’s something to continue explore and to celebrate.

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?

My new novel, Fret, fictionalizes Ottawa in a very loose sense. It is about a musician who loses touch with her musical community and, therefore, with her art form and her sense of self. This musician does, however, reestablish a bit of a community, thus finding her footing again. But there is at the heart of the novel a sense of isolation and examination of how not everyone wants to be part of a community or feels they deserve to be part of one. This experience is part of what is explored in Fret.

Q: What are you working on now?

It’s a novel, but I don’t want to give much away as I may change my mind about it. I will say that there are elements of speculative fiction involved, and that’s a fun departure for me.