Kate Heartfield is the former opinion editor of the Ottawa Citizen, where
she worked from 2004 to 2015. In 2015, she was shortlisted for a National
Newspaper Award in editorial writing. She is now a freelance editor and teaches
journalism at Carleton University and creative writing online. Her 2018 novel Armed
in Her Fashion won the Aurora Award for Best Novel, and her time-travel
novella Alice Payne Arrives was shortlisted for an Aurora and for the
Nebula award. She’s written two interactive novels, The Magician’s Workshop
and The Road to Canterbury, both of which have been shortlisted for the
Nebula award in game writing. She lives in rural Ottawa.
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you
here?
I came to Ottawa from Manitoba in 1995 to study political science at
the University of Ottawa, so I’ve been here for 25 years. I finished that
degree, did a master’s degree in journalism at Carleton University, and by then
this was home.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently,
the writing community here?
I’ve always been a writer, since I was a child. In Ottawa, I’ve
tended to meet writing friends through local events such as the Tree Reading
Series, the Ottawa International Writers Festival or Can*Con. Through and beyond
those events, I’ve made a lot of friendships here, which is essential, for me
anyway, in such a lonely business.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your
thinking about writing, if at all?
I’ve been in a couple of critique groups, which has helped me
improve my writing in a direct way. Less directly, being in a community has
helped me navigate my own journey as a writer – everything from imposter syndrome
to productivity hacks. It helps to have people who’ll celebrate with you when things
go wrong, or nod knowingly and put an arm around you when they don’t.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else?
What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
These days, I write mostly science fiction and fantasy, and Ottawa
has an amazing, supportive community of writers in that genre, disproportionate
to a city this size. We have superstars and up-and-comers, and the annual convention
Can*Con is at the heart of that community. It’s so well-run that it attracts people
from elsewhere and generally raises the bar of expectations on our community
for respect and professionalism.
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?
The years I spent as a journalist covering Ottawa and federal
politics have definitely informed my work, which still tends to focus on
culture, institutions and social change, although it’s now mainly through a
fictional lens.
Q: What are you working on now?
My next novel is a big historical fantasy set in 18th
century Europe, coming from Harper Voyager UK in the summer of 2021. At the
moment, my editor and I are deep in editorial conversations about it, which is
a lot of work but very exciting, and it’s fun to work so closely with an editor
who shares my vision and is just as enthusiastic about the book as I am. It’s a
book about where modern liberal democracy comes from, and what some of its
challenges are, so once again it’s very informed by my years covering politics
here, even though Ottawa isn’t the setting.
