Parallel Careers

“You want to be continually energized by your students. And that's really the dance of mentorship. And that's the gift of mentorship, is that when you finally get an afternoon to return to your own work, you're going with that hunger that they showed you all the time.”

In this episode, Richard Van Camp discusses his life’s work as a storyteller and writer to pass on teachings for the next generation, and his excitement about the future of Indigenous literature. 

• 0:29 | Realizing as a child that the school curriculum he was learning was cultural theft and how it inspired him to interview Elders and write down their knowledge for future generations
• 4:27 | Becoming the Handibus driver in his community and recording community matriarchs
• 5:00 | Studying Native Management Studies at Arctic College and making the choice to pursue writing over politics
• 8:39 | Getting to meet author and Sahtu Dene Elder George Blondin
• 11: 23 | How he’s carried Maureen Medved’s advice on teaching into his work with the Audible mentorship program
• 13:26 | Why he encourages his students to “write for revenge”
• 15:25 | Recording Elders in Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan and the teaching he learned from James Grandjambe
• 22:55 | Developing Gather: Richard Van Camp on Storytelling and sharing interviews from Elders who have passed with their living descendants
• 25:25 | How seeing a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug completely changed the storyline in his book When We Play Our Drums, They Sing!
• 30:46 | Ending in the splits

 
Guest Bio:

Richard Van Camp is a proud member of the Dogrib (Tłıcho) Nation from Fort Smith, NWT, Canada. He is a graduate of the En’owkin International School of Writing, the University of Victoria’s Creative Writing BFA Program, and the Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He is an internationally renowned storyteller and best-selling author. His novel, The Lesser Blessed, is now a movie with First Generation Films and premiered in September of 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is the author of five collections of short stories, six baby books, three children’s books, five comics and much more.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach.
Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.
 
Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips from Richard Van Camp at: tnq.ca/parallel

You can find Richard’s work here:
 
Gather: Richard Van Camp on Storytelling
The Lesser Blessed
Angel Wing Splash Pattern
Moccasin Square Gardens
We Sang You Home

“I think I was a bad writer before I discovered that I could use humor effectively and that I could use it at all. Being able to crack into just something and use humor kind of broke open a little bit of a creative gate that was really holding me back.”

In this episode, Dina Del Bucchia discusses developing her own comedic voice outside an academic setting and bringing humour to cultural critique. She discusses:

• 1:39 | Marrying humour to the emotional core of the story
• 3:15 | Encouraging students to write comedy that “punches up” in her introduction to comedic forms class
• 6:09 | How seeing Wooly Mammoth skeletons at Whitehorse’s Beringia Interpretive Centre inspired her to write her collection “It's a Big Deal!”
• 8:44 | Writing about class from a working class perspective, and selling $40 business books that will never be released in paperback
• 12:43 | Her story collection “Don’t Tell Me What to Do” and writing women’s anger
• 15:20 | Getting students to write song lyrics in class and the unexpected pandemic content it produced
• 18:22 | Hosting the podcast Can’t Lit and giving a platform to writers from smaller presses

Guest Bio:

Dina Del Bucchia is the author of three collections of poetry, Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013), Blind Items (Insomniac Press, 2014), and Rom Com (Talonbooks, 2015), written with Daniel Zomparelli. She also hosts Can’t Lit, a podcast on Canadian literature and culture, with Jen Sookfong Lee. Her short story, "Under the 'I'," was a finalist for the Writers' Trust RBC Bronwen Wallace Award in 2012. Her first collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, was  published in fall 2017 with Arsenal Pulp Press. She is a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine and is the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she currently is an instructor.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips from Dina Del Bucchia at:

tnq.ca/parallel

You can find Dina’s work here: 

It’s a Big Deal! 

Don't Tell Me What to Do 

Rom Com

Blind Items

Coping with Emotions and Otters

"Writing's my playground. So I feel very free. I feel, you know, we're in a world where there's not a lot of freedom. I feel like I'm free on the page."

In this episode, Carrianne Leung challenges established ideas about craft and teaching, and shares how her writing aims to show the complexity and fullness of being human. She discusses:

• How her work as a sociologist intersects with her work as a fiction writer in its concerns
  with the narratives we tell ourselves and how she’s rethinking the traditional writer’s
  workshop 0:45
• The development of her first novel, The Wondrous Woo and magic realism as a political
  choice 5:03
• Moving beyond stereotypes about multiculturalism in her story collection That Time I Loved You  9:32
• How cross-stitching helped keep her creative and connected during the pandemic 15:00
• Imagining the apocalypse through the eyes of a raccoon in her new novel The After 18:26 
• Asking a group of middle school students to pinpoint the moment when they no longer felt like children and the care that fostered between participants. 21:02

You can find Carrianne ’s work here: The Wondrous Woo https://www.inanna.ca/product/wondrous-woo/That Time I Loved You https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443452861/that-time-i-loved-you/

The music you heard on this episode was composed by Amadeo Ventura. You can hear more of his music at amadeoventura.weebly.com.

Visit TNQ.ca to access more of Carrianne Leung’s writing and teaching tips, including web extras about mentorship and cultural appropriation. If you like our podcast, please leave a review — it really helps other listeners find our show! Thank you!

Guest bio:

Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, published by Inanna Publications was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, was released in 2018 by HarperCollins and in 2019 in the US by Liveright Publishing. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, and was named as one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, That Time I Loved You was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019, long listed for Canada Reads 2019 and was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019. Leung’s work has also appeared in the Puritan, Ricepaper, the Globe and Mail, Room, Prairie Fire and Open Book Ontario. Her third book titled, The After, will be released by Harper Collins Canada in 2022. She is currently faculty at the MFA program at the University of Guelph, where she teaches a course called “Decolonial Fiction.” Recommended reading: Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez

"I think with a poem, you always want to have something at stake that you just are not going to be able to answer, but you keep trying to get at it in this way, in that way, in this way."

In this episode, Sheryda Warrener explores how poems anchor us in the world, the importance of making space for ritual, and how her students build material from sensory experience.

She discusses:

· Teaching English to children and adults in Japan and Sweden, and how the experiences shaped her as a writer and educator (0:50)

· Wandering the aisles of Home Hardware looking at form in the world and other student-led field trips in her Hybrid Forms class (6:13)

· Using the voice of a Russian cosmonaut in her collection Floating is Everything to explore shifts in perspective and the tension between delight and grief (12:03)

· Looking at visual art as a practice and a process and how it informs her new manuscript (16:52)

· Finding her footing in the 200-person lecture hall and using Window Swap as a way to explore outer and inner landscapes (19:40)

Guest Bio: 

Sheryda Warrener is the author of two poetry collections: Hard Feelings (Snare, 2010) and Floating is Everything (Nightwood, 2015). Her work can be found in Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Hazlitt, and The Believer, among others. She is a recipient of The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry, and recent poems have been selected for Best Canadian Poetry and The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21stCentury Canadian Poetry. She teaches courses in hybrid forms, and poem-making.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more information and recommended readings from Sheryda Warrener, at:

tnq.ca/parallel

"Writing is something that I really come at as a writer. And I think, like many writers, we all bring our, our lenses to what we write. Science--now I'm realizing more and more—it's a language, it's an entire language. Which, of course, has a culture associated with it as all languages do. And I bring that language and culture to my writing"

In this episode, Madhur Anand challenges the divide between art and science and proposes new structures for writing, informed by the natural world. 

She discusses:

• Her Governor-General-Award-Winning memoirThis Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart and taking on the voice of her own parents (1:06)
• The turbulent history of Partition and how it influenced her family history and also the structure and style of the memoir (6:29)
• Telling many stories at once—“Aapbeeti or jag beeti?” My story or the story of the world? (7:50)
• Using constraints in both scientific inquiry and writing (11:05)
• Helping students move beyond superficial editing to actually re-vision their drafts (12:40)
• How both studying science and reading poetry can increase our empathy (15:47)

Guest bio:

Dr. MadhurAnandis the author of the experimental memoirThis Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, the poetry collection A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes, and several other literary works published in national and international literary magazines. She is a professor of ecology and sustainability at the University of Guelph, where she was appointed the inaugural Director of the Guelph Institute for Environmental Research.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

The music you heard in this episode was composed by Amadeo Ventura. You can hear more of his music at amadeoventura.weebly.com.

Visit TNQ.ca to access more of Madhur Anand’swriting and teaching tips, including web extras about accessibility in CanLit andher tips for teaching online. If you like our podcast, please leave a review—it really helps other listeners find our show! Thank you!

"I talk about speculative fiction in particular, as theory given characters and taken form. And so, rather than it just being like a theoretic concept out there somewhere, it becomes this very specific—here's a character that embodies this theory. Here's a world that embodies this theory. And then we play it out."

In this episode, Derek Newman-Stille discusses breaking down the classroom hierarchy, disrupting fairy tales, and the need for Disability Arts.

They discuss:

• Getting “a-ha!” moments through arts-based research, and sharing research insights in the public sphere (0:58)
• Moving past CanLit’s attachment to realism and creating a community for speculative writing through Speculating Canada, a digital humanities hub (4:55)
• Their Frankenstein fiction anthology We Shall Be Monsters and examining ways we project horror in an ableist society. (6:30)
• Helping students develop speculative worlds using the diversity of nature on planet Earth—including Birds of Paradise! (9:14) 
• Creating contemporary fairytales that make space for marginalized identities in their collection Whispers Between Fairies (13:00)
• Recognizing Disability Arts as part of creating a disability community and increasing accessibility (18:08)

Guest Bio:

Derek Newman-Stille is a PhD student at the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies at Trent University. Derek is a Queer, Nonbinary, Disabled activist, artist, author, and editor. They edited the two collections Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile) and We Shall Be Monsters (Renaissance Press) and they have a story in the all disabled collection Nothing Without Us (Renaissance Press). Their art has been featured in Lackington's Magazine and Postscripts to Darkness. Derek runs the 9 time Aurora Award winning digital humanities site Speculating Canada and the site Dis(Abled) Embodiment. Derek researches Canadian Urban Dark Fantasy and the use of the symbol of the monster for exploring the representation of disability issues. Derek is an artist of many mediums and their visual arts can be seen at www.dereknewmanstille.ca.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips at:

tnq.ca/parallel

“When I think about teachers as gatekeepers, I think deeply about privilege and what our access to information and knowledge looks like. I recall a lot of the opportunities that have been offered to me came from a teacher just paying attention. And so when I think of gatekeeping at that smaller scale, it's also the teacher needing to pay attention to that and to open the door and say, 'Hey, you. You can come into the space. It's totally fine.’”

In this episode, Chelene Knight discusses creating new containers for learning and how she’s shaping CanLit as a writer, editor, and agent. 

• 0:41 | Her focus on creative sustainability through industry transparency, wellness and care, and process-building at The Forever Writers Club through Breathing Space Creative.
• 4:33 | Writing in hybrid forms and the development of Dear Current Occupant
• 8:00 | Becoming a literary agent and creating ethical boundaries
• 11:35 | Her exercise “Be the Observer” and how it can help overcome writer’s block
• 13:22 | Bringing the community of Hogan’s Alley to life on the page in her forthcoming novel Junie

Guest Bio: 

Chelene Knight is the author of Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her essays have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, and the Toronto Star. Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award.

Knight was the previous managing editor at Room magazine and the previous festival director for the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver. She is now CEO of her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative and she works as an associate literary agent with Transatlantic Agency. Chelene teaches part-time at the University of Toronto. 

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips at:

tnq.ca/parallel

“My own background in physics has taught me wonder. As a poet, we deal mostly in metaphors and a metaphor says that this is that - that's what equations do too. Equations say that mass is energy. Just being able to throw yourself at the universe and find out everything you can is a great background for a scientist or for an artist.”

In this episode, Erin Bow discusses the lightning bolt of inspiration and balancing writing, teaching and science translation. She discusses:

• 1:57 | Her advice for young writers
• 2:56 | Writing the books that “young me really needed to read,” including her Governor General’s Award-winning book Stand on the Sky
• 7:06 | Drawing lines about which stories to write
• 8:56 | Getting kids on their feet during school visits
• 12:51 | How studying physics has enriched her artistic practice…and the mystery of where gold comes from

Guest Bio: 

Erin Bow is an award-winning poet and novelist, whose honors include the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, the CBC Literary Award for poetry, and a Governor General’s Award. Though trained as a physicist, Erin Bow is now a poet and children’s writer, working out of her garden shed in Kitchener, Ontario. 

She is the author of five novels for young adults: The fantasies Plain Kate and Sorrow’s Knot, and the genre-bending duology, The Scorpion Rules, and The Swan Riders, and Stand on the Sky. All her books will make you cry on the bus.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips from Erin Bow at:

tnq.ca/parallel

“Many people have lifted me up and have given me a helping hand in my career and I wouldn't be here without them. And so the more I can do to pull up the next generation, the more I will do. And that's what teaching is all about.”

In this episode, Kathy Friedman discusses offering students choice and control in the classroom. She discusses:

• 0:27 | Building Mad literary arts and Inkwell Workshops
• 3:09 | Being trauma-informed and making participants feel seen
• 5:57 | Her forthcoming collection All the Shining People and exploring Jewish South African identity during and after apartheid
• 11:18 | Teaching with objects and the importance of brainstorming
• 13:46 | The power of bringing your own vulnerabilities into the classroom

Guest Bio: 

Kathy Friedman’s writing has appeared in literary magazines including The New Quarterly, PRISM international, Grain, Geist, Room, Canadian Notes & Queries, Humber Literary Review, and This Magazine. She has been a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, runner-up for the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award and PRISM International’s short fiction contest, and was nominated by PRISM for the Journey Prize. Kathy has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and a BFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She teaches creative writing in the University of Guelph’s department of Open Learning. 

Kathy is the co-founder and artistic director of InkWell Workshops, which delivers free creative writing workshops to people with mental health and addiction issues. She is the publisher of four literary anthologies with their in-house imprint, InkWell Books.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips from Kathy Friedman at:

tnq.ca/parallel

“For me, poetry is really where my heart lives. And the reason why these poems are maybe such short emotional bursts is because that's how my heart functions. I definitely know I'm not a super technical poet. I'm not a structural form poet. My poetry is just me heart-speaking. And that's it. And that's all I want it to be. And that's all it needs to be.”

In this episode, Francine Cunningham discusses giving people permission to write their own stories. She discusses:

• 0:32 | Working with youth who feel disconnected from their own culture
• 2:21 | Giving adults permission to be creative
• 4:55 | The development of her award-winning collection On/Me and what it’s like to write an encyclopedia of the self
• 8:12 | Why it’s important to keep some stories for yourself and your community
• 9:48 | What we notice when we stop constantly trying to be productive
• 12:27 | Her exercise “Words Matter” and the five essential questions to ask yourself when you’re writing

Guest Bio: 

Francine Cunningham is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist, and educator originally from Calgary, AB but who currently resides in Vancouver, BC. She is a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing MFA program and a recent winner of The Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. 

Her fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon’s Prose shortlist, Joyland Magazine, The Puritan Magazine, and more. Her debut book of poetry is titled On/Me (Caitlin Press).

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more free writing and teaching tips from Francine Cunningham at:

tnq.ca/parallel