Aug 30, 2023
Welcome to the first episode of the KWF Podcast, where we go beyond author chat that typically occurs at the festival. This is an opportunity for listeners to learn more about authors not only in the context of their books but about where they come from regarding their process, their struggles and their inspirations. We want to unearth what drives them in their craft by exploring the material they write about but also how they navigate failure.
Failure is a key theme to today's episode, and we chat about that and more with Canadian poet, professor, reviewer, and writer Tanis MacDonald.
Tanis will be part of the Writers Retreat Faculty at the next Kingston WritersFest, taking place from September 27 to October 1, 2023.
Show Notes
In this episode we cover a lot of ground between Aara and Tricia before Aara's interview with Tanis MacDonald. Some highlights include:
- What is failure? How do authors navigate failure?
- How do we change the perception of what failure means?
- How does failure lead to resilience?
- What does it mean to be a "bad birder"?
- Curiosity as a driver for writing
- The need for discipline and tools, not strictures
- How is writing informed by identity, and identity informed by writing?
- Importance of scrutinizing classic texts according to class, pushing back against an “abuse of subjectivity”
- What does it mean to be a working class feminist?
- What is Tanis working on now?
Book and Author References
- How to Fail as a Pop Star by Vivek Shraya
- On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche
- Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernadine Evaristo
About Tanis MacDonald
She is Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University with specialities in Canadian literature, women’s literature, and the elegy. Her memoir via instruction, Out of Line: Daring to be an Artist Outside the Big City, is now available from Wolsak and Wynn. Tanis is also a co-editor (with Ariel Gordon and Rosanna Deerchild) of the multi-genre anthology GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House), and her book The Daughter’s Way (WLUP, 2012) was a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Tessera, Prairie Fire, Studies in Canadian Literature, Hamilton Arts and Letters, The New Quarterly, and in Far and Wide: Essays from Across Canada (Pearson), and in the forthcoming anthology Far Villages (Black Lawrence Press). She is the author of three books of poetry, with a fourth, Mobile, now available from Book*hug.
Show Transcript
A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.