I was born and educated in Swansea, South Wales, where (this was long ago) I had a classical education for which I am deeply thankful. In 1964 I married Alistair Tilson, a fellow Brit, who had recently become an English professor at Carleton, and immediately emigrated to Canada to live with him in Ottawa, where our two sons were born, and where I taught English at different levels, including university. After I retired I threw myself into the joys and rigours of learning to write fiction. My first book, The Monkey Puzzle Tree, published by Biblioasis Press in 2013, was short-listed for the 2012 Metcalf-Rooke Award and for the 2014 Ottawa Book Awards. My second book, The Disappearing Boy, was published in 2017 by Nimbus Publishing. Two short stories have been published in CAA’s magazine, Byline.
How long have you been in Ottawa and what first brought you here?
Marriage brought me to Ottawa where I have mostly lived since 1964
How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently the writing community here?
I’ve always been involved in writing, that of other people at first of course. Aggravated at always having to wait for the end of the stories my mother would read to me, I taught myself to read, and before long was reading those stories to my little brother, along with making up my own to entertain us both. Later, at school and at university I focused from the start on English Literature and Language, sporadically writing stories, and poems, but never dreaming of getting anything published. Dazzled as I was by the masterminds I studied, how should I presume? Also I had Kingsley Amis as a teacher at Swansea University, which didn’t help my lack of confidence. After university I took my passion for literature and language into my life’s work as an English teacher, mostly in Ottawa, at high school, community college and university levels. I still wrote a little, but teaching English, while enjoyable and satisfying, is hard, creatively draining work, especially when combined with raising two sons, running a pet-friendly household, and caring for my mother who by then had joined us.
My first encounter with a writing community happened after I retired, when I went to a memoir-writing course at Carleton given by the brilliant and disinhibiting Ivan Coyote. It was here that I finally realised that I could write. The encouragement from Ivan and the class shifted me from “How should I presume?” to “Hey, I can do this!”. From there I was lucky enough to get into Mary Borsky’s inspiring short -story workshop where I met several already excellent writers, many of whom, like Mary herself, along with Deborah Anne Tunney, Frances Boyle, Jean van Loon and others, became long-time friends. In this group I gained the knowledge and confidence to write a collection of short stories which I was encouraged to submit to the Metcalf-Rooke Award. I did not get the award of course, but what I did get was a hand-written letter from John Metcalf himself, suggesting that the material in some of the stories should be made into a novel. This I did and submitted the result to him with the result that The Monkey Puzzle Tree was edited by him, and published in 2013 by Biblioasis. Having John as an editor was illuminating. He didn’t tell me what to write, of course, but he showed me more story-telling techniques and pushed me relentlessly to go deeper and give the whole thing, especially the ending, more oomph.
How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I found that group work is enormously helpful, especially to the beginner. I soon saw that it’s technique and practice and persistence that work, not fiddling around waiting for inspiration. Particularly helpful was the objective analysis we would apply to first-class stories along with our own, seeing what worked and how, and what failed and why. I also saw how important it is, to the beginner especially, to have the support and feedback of other writers. I realized that writers in training should not isolate themselves from other writers but should learn all they could from them.
What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide or allow?
I think Ottawa is an unusually literate city. Three universities, a community college, and the government contribute participants and audience. Also it’s relatively small, and the literary community is tightly connected (as I learned when, thanks to word-of-mouth recommendation, I was invited to discuss my first book at twenty book clubs scattered all over the city). The poetry community is also very active, with weekly virtual meetings and much publication. Then there is the Manx Pub, run by the poet David O’Meara, which provided a vibrant subterranean milieu for writers and musicians. There are writing festivals, literary competitions, poetry groups and dramatic societies; all cramped now by Covid, but sure to be back, stronger than ever.
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 used my school and collage teaching experience for the high school episode in The Monkey Puzzle Tree. The setting of the second-hand bookstore scenes in the book is based on an Ottawa store. The recurring park in the second half of the book is Windsor Park. Book clubs and other contacts showed me that the book resonated particularly deeply with Ottawa’s older citizens, perhaps because of the WW2 material but also because of the main story dealing with matters not talked about at that faraway time. The horsy material in The Disappearing Boy is based on our keeping horses when we lived in the country outside Ottawa. At Algonquin College I created and taught an elective introductory literature course. I’ve never forgotten those students, whose openness, intelligence, and hunger for a broader understanding and vision made that course the most satisfying experience of my teaching life.
What are you working on now?
I’m polishing some short stories and trying to work up a couple more in the hope of making a publishable collection.