Q and A

1) When did you start writing?
I started writing poetry as a kid.  I entered a poem I wrote called Black in a local arts festival.  (Clearly based on the title alone,  my penchant for all things moody and introspective was burgeoning at that tender age.)  You had to preform your reading in front of an adjudicator and audience.  The only thing I remember about the poem was  a line that said "my french toast is burnt and it tastes like rubber."  I got laughs.  Those laughs fed my fledgling artist ego and I was hooked! I won first place for my poetry and earned a scholarship to an arts camp.  There began my illustrious career.

2) What book do you remember reading that was significant as a child?
I lived in rural Manitoba on a farm.  In those days Manitou, Manitoba, my home town, did not have a library.  We sent away for books and they came in this large package in the mail.  I loved looking at pictures and the smell of the books.  I read the story The Secret Garden. I loved it because of the contrary main character Mary but also because of  the beauty and quietude of rural living it portrayed.  Thinking back now, I loved the story because its theme was about restoration and healing.

3)Who were some influential writers in your life?
My mother wrote a diary every day.  She kept track of the daily rhythms of life.  I remember sitting watching her write and looking through the stacks of coil bound journals she wrote.

I also had a creative writing professor at university, Roland Huff, who said something to me about writing that I have never forgotten.  Being the young idealist in his class,  I told him after a rousing lecture he delivered that I wanted to be a writer.  He looked at me like I am sure he has looked at the hundred of other students who had told him they wanted to be writers and said quite tersely.  "Well do you write?  Do you write every day?  Do you have collections of writing? Finished books? Articles?  Poems? because if you don't, don't say you want to be a writer, because writers write.

I went away like a scolded dog and started writing.

4)Where did you get the inspiration for I Loved Her?
I used to teach Kindergarten and have read in my lifetime hundred of children's books to students.  I love the pattern of children's stories and in particular stories with repetition.  My grandmothers have been very pivotal in my life and it seemed natural to write a story about a girl remembering all of the things she used to do with her grandmother.  The grandmother in I Loved Her is a "mashup" of memories of my two grandmothers Florence Linda Thompson and Hertha Violet Lavallee.