Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I've had a connection to Ottawa for years. I spent weekends here while I was an officer cadet at the Royal Military College (RMC) in Kingston. My family was in Labrador, so I'd usually spend Thanksgiving and other long weekends with friends who took pity on me and welcomed me into their homes. My first posting after RMC was at the 2nd Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (2RCHA) in Petawawa, and I often came into Ottawa for time off. My Commanding Officer at the time made it very clear that he didn't want his officers fraternizing with the troops on the weekends and encouraged us to get out of town.
I'm no longer in the Canadian Forces, but my husband is, and he is currently based in Ottawa. My three kids and Nathan and I have been here for four years now.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I've been writing stories for years, and have always kept a journal. I submitted my first short story (Art of Camouflage), to Brick Literary on my 40th birthday in 2016. It was rejected, but the reader from Brick asked to meet and discuss the structure of the piece (Thank you Evan J!). The story evolved with Evan's help, and was an honourable mention in The New Quarterly's fiction contest. TNQ published the story in Issue 46, and I was able to meet and work with editor Pamela Mulloy. It was this experience that drew me into the idea that I could be a professional writer. Pamela treated my work with such incisiveness and respect. It was a formative concept for me at the time, to treat the stories with this quality of care, both at the sentence level, and the overall structuring of clarity and authenticity.
As for the Ottawa writing community, my initial encounter was in 2017 during a reading of Best Canadian Short Stories at the Manx. Paige Cooper was reading, and David Huebert, and Lisa Alward, and I was beside myself to hear these writers read their stories. It was my first time at the Manx and the place was its packed and cavernous self. When I entered and searched for a place to sit or stand, a woman tugged on my coat and said, You look like a writer, would you like to join us? Can you even imagine my happiness? The woman was none other than Frances Boyle! That night, Frances introduced me to David O'Meara and a handful of other wonderful Ottawa writers. I felt welcome in a room full of strangers, and then the readings...it was a very special introduction to the Ottawa Writing community. I'll never forget it.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
Feeling supported and encouraged by a group of talented and professional writers elevated my sense of possibility with writing. It shifted my thinking about rejection, how a writer can manage to thrive in the face of rejection. How the two things (success and rejection) can happen at the same time, even with the same piece of writing.
I submitted a poem to Arc Poetry, which was rejected, but I was invited to participate in the Arc's Poet in Residence Mentorship Program with David O'Meara. At the time, I had only met David briefly at the Manx, but I wasn't familiar with his work. I had no idea what I was in for. It was such a stroke of luck to work closely with someone as talented and generous as David for the better part of a year. He encouraged me to seek alternatives for certain words, to think about what a poem is trying to achieve, to allow different poems to do different things. His mentorship gave me a new confidence to try different things, to be less precious, and less purple ahah! It was around the same time that I was spending more time with Frances Boyle, who was promoting the one hundred rejections a year idea. Honestly, it was a tremendous nourishment for a new writer. David told me about the Banff Centre and I decided, why not apply! I had applied to the MFA program at UBC and been rejected. I applied again and guess what?!
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
I noticed that the artist community in Ottawa is insecure about its reputation as a government town. Its artists have to work around the scaffolding and tone of stability which can lead to complacency and poison for creatives. I'm not a student, I don't live downtown, and I have three teenagers. My experience has been that a few extra steps are needed to discover the colourful and vibrant happenings in Ottawa. Unlike St. John's, for example, where the music and culture is in the air and the water, it feels a little hidden behind concrete and tempered glass in Ottawa. Once these discoveries are made though, it can be difficult to pick and choose between numerous literary events happening at the same time. Between VerseFest, Ottawa Writers Fest, Riverbed Reading Series, Tree Reading series, 241 Poetry, GCTC, IFFO, SAW Gallery and Arts Court, Art House Cafe, Perfect Books and of course, The Manx, there is an abundance of artistic discourse and innovation in Ottawa. The community is active and intimate and welcoming. For me, it's become a matter of showing up.
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 wrote a story that plays with the idea that people and spaces can be larger and more complex than they initially appear. It takes place in Ottawa, delves into the mid-century architecture of James Strutt. The Manx makes an appearance. I couldn't help myself! It's a fun pyramid-shaped story and I'm really proud of it. As for my approach to the work, as I mentioned in an earlier question, the sense of being a part of a community definitely nourishes my writerly self. I've met other writers who inspire and motivate me, and have two friends in particular who meet with me on a weekly basis to write together. We set a timer, write at intervals, drink coffee and talk about writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
My first collection of stories, titled, Art of Camouflage, is in its final stages of edits (comma trauma), and will be published by Freehand in 2024. I'm currently immersed in creating the world of my novel which takes place at the military college in Kingston in the '90s. It's my first novel, so I'm trying to let go of the compressed writing style that I have learned to love with the short story form. I've been reading and rereading Sally Rooney and Emma Cline and Rebecca Makkai and Ann Enright, studying the way they pace themselves, allowing narratives to unfold and blossom.
One of my stories was selected to be in this year's Best Canadian Stories, so I've been working with an editor at Biblioasis to polish the final draft for a Fall/23 publication. And finally, I'm preparing myself mentally for the Writers at Woody Point festival in Newfoundland in August. I attended this festival in 2017 as a brand new writer, and was positively enchanted by the writers and musicians and overall radiance of this festival. This year, Sarah Polley will be there, so I have been busy womanifesting that we will meet, walk by the sea, and share stories. She will connect deeply with one or numerous of my stories and say, Wow, Sara, that sounds very compelling; I'd like to adapt this story for the screen. What do you think? What say you? The two of us will stare into each other's souls for a long moment, then shift our gaze to the horizon where a pod of humpback whales will be swimming gracefully, just below the surface.
