Tara talks with Hollay Ghadery, an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishanaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions' Microland imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for nonfiction/memoir. (Check out Rebecca's interview with Hollay on the January 11, 2023 episode.) Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released with Radiant Press in April 2023. Her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, will be released on September 1, 2024, with Gordon Hill Press.
Hollay is also the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township as well as the founder of and senior publicist with River Street Writing, a team of creatives who aim to produce and celebrate amazing writers.
Books, authors highlighted:
- Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook by David Galef
- Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang by Ava Farmehri
- Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
- Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
- Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa
- The Boulevard by Jerrod Edson
- Poet Bronwen Wallace
- Most of All the Wanting by Amanda Merpaw
- Whylah Falls by George Elliott Clarke
- A Simple Carpenter by David Margoshes
- Author Adele Wiseman
- Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel by Pamela Mulloy
- The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits by Ben Berman Ghan
- The Mona Lisa Sacrifice (The Book of Cross #1) by Peter Roman
Publishers:
Literary Festivals:
This is Canada Reads American Style, featuring two friends who love Canada Reads and Canadian literature. Welcome our host Rebecca from Michigan and Tara from Ontario. Hello listeners and welcome to Canada Reads American Style. This is Tara and today I have a very special guest with me today. I'm going to do a little introduction before I say hello to her. Hallé Gallery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed race identity and mental illness was published by Guernica Additions Microland in print in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Book Club Award for nonfiction/memoir. Little Heads Up you can go back in the past to our January 11th, 2023 episode in which Rebecca interviewed Hallé for that memoir. Her debut collection of Poetry Rebellion Box was released with Radiant Press in April 2023. Hallé's short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, will be released on September 1st were just days away from that release with Gordon Hill Press and if that wasn't enough, Hallé is also the poet laureate of Scugog Township as well as the founder of and senior publicist at River Street Writing, a team of creatives who aim to produce and celebrate amazing writers. Welcome Hallé. Well thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Thank you for having me. Oh I am so excited to speak to you today because Rebecca had her chance last year and now it's my chance. So let's start off with your newest book which is coming out on September 1st, Widow Fantasies. In each of the stories, your characters are extremely well developed but this is short fiction, flash fiction, so not just short stories, right? Like so how do you as a writer develop characters while working within the confines of short fiction? Yeah it's a good question. I don't know if I really have a wonderful answer for it. It's a lot of these things are just a lot of stories take impetus from my life so they're kind of just like extensions of me or experiences I've had or people I know and then when I'm working with short fiction, and in this case really short fiction, I think somebody pointed it out in a recent review and I never noticed it before there's like 2.5 pages of kind of the max. I don't know I don't think I'd ever really pay that much attention to the length but I think I try to focus not on like fleshing out an entire character but just developing one thing about them that can help a reader understand this one point of their lives but also more broadly maybe who they might be in other situations. I read a wonderful book called Berevity by David Groff and it's a book on writing flash fiction and that really like very practical exercises and it really helped me just keep my eye on the prize and keep focused and realizing that, you know, flash fiction is not going to be for everybody and I don't even want to call it flash because some are longer than flash. It's kind of this in a lot of them in between state. I think what these short stories do is it really challenges people's expectations from narrative and more specifically I was trying to challenge people's expectations for narratives that come from women and the way that people often and even readers expect women's narratives to flow and it wasn't anything I was doing consciously at first but it's something that I was aware of when readers or editors asked you know or were not pushing back nobody pushed back but when readers engaged with the work you know why was I just why was I choosing and to do certain things why was I making these decisions and it was it was kind of because this is my life and I want to and this is the way I see the world and I don't want anyone telling me that it's not valid because it doesn't follow a certain narrative arc that you expect from me. Yeah I actually really like that because I've come okay I'll full disclosure I'm 53 and I've just only recently started going you know what if I don't want to I've always I've come to realize that in media there's this pressure for us to that we're supposed to watch certain shows because they're classics and we're supposed to read certain books there are expectations of us to consume certain media and I've come to realize that often that media is from a male perspective right and I so I've come to the point that I'm like I'm almost refusing to consume some of that media because I don't like to be told and I'm finally getting the nerve up to refuse that so I love what you just said about how you're just gonna tell the stories how you want to. Yeah and I'm I'm really aware of the fact I mean I was just saying to my partner the other night is more than any other book I've written I'm prepared for people just to be like I'm not gonna say not like the book but to have to struggle with it and I didn't write this to make people struggle I don't believe in writing books that make readers work for it like I think reading should you know it can cause reflection it can cause you to feel unsettled it but like you the actual writing itself should not like feel like you're slogging through some essay on metaphysics and epistemology right like yeah I don't want that for people that was never my intention but I'm not I'm not trying to give people comfortable narratives if they feel like they're being pulled out of a story fine that's what it's like to be a woman with four young children you're constantly pulled out of your life you're constantly feeling disrupted you're constantly feeling unsettled you're constantly feeling joy and fear and all of these things and because you're all your life is always interrupted and there's these fragments of life and fantasy and I mean that's what I was just trying to I was replicating that so but I am prepared for people to be like to have these responses of being like oh well I didn't feel like I got to know this character now yeah welcome to my life I don't get a coherent thought like it's that's what it's the the form is reflecting the content and I expect that to challenge people who are expecting a certain narrative the point of this book is not to give people full narratives of these women's lives that that's not it's not the point yeah I would tell anyone who says that to you that they can you can send them to me because you mean you may not give the full narrative like I may not know the whole story but I know that person in your story do you know what I mean like at that very moment in their life you they are fully fleshed out in your stories well thank you for that and I do have to say amazing editors and beta readers for kind of push for pushing me sometimes it wasn't always that way the poet in me is like nope less words less words less words I had one editor tell me not for this project but for a novel I have come out in 2026 she was like I've never had to save this to anyone before but less showing more telling you can just tell us something now and then Holly and Mike I can I don't know I don't know I am so used to showing everything so I really do appreciate that it it's not and I'm not trying to say it like all those came that truly to me flash fiction is a very precise form and I keep calling flash but again it's not even strictly flash it's just kind of length size not made up because it varies in length but it's just what the story ended wherever I thought the story shouldn't and if people want to shove that into a little box and call it this or that that's their business they're just short short stories that's that's why I call them I like the term I've all been referring to it as flash fiction but I saw I think on your website the term short fiction and I really liked that actually too because it wasn't short stories it was short fiction yeah and I mean you know like I said put it in that any label you want give it any label that makes you as a reader feel comfortable or not you but any reader feel comfortable I'm kind of kind of over labels at this point in my life I feel I feel very woo-woo saying that sometimes but you know I'm you know I'm mixed race or biracial I'm you know I'm queer but I'm in a heteronormative relationship I'm like I'm neuro divergent but I'm managing right now I always just feel like I'm not enough of anything to be anything so when anyone's trying to like slap labels and automatically like yeah that's the whole point of this book not whole point part of the point of this book is you know we as people as women we contain multitudes and I think that labeling things can be helpful sometimes especially if you're just kind of trying to figure out who you are these labels can be super helpful but they're like training wheels but for me personally I wanted those training wheels off after a while and I was fine not having anything hold me back or define me because I want room to grow and part of it's like wanting room to grow past mistakes like I hate to be labeled as who I was or what I was doing in my 20s right I need to move fast that because that wasn't that wasn't you know my most a lot of my moments in my 20s were my proudest moments but they've gotten you to this point so you know try to remember that every I hadn't all that I wouldn't be where I am and you know not that I'm in this enjoy a scene of euphoria over my life at all points but you know I love my babies I have a wonderful support of partner I love my goats and my chickens and my dogs I just realized I said I love everything except my partner so yeah I can't complain awesome now having said that that you can't complain there is a thread of female rage through a lot of these stories yes and I love it I love female rage so give me some thoughts on this well I mean it's I think I think so many people have spoken very articulately about female rage and I would argue that anyone could speak more articulately about articulately about almost anything than I can I'm very my thoughts are very disjointed and junky and on the best days but for me it's this I mean I grew up specifically I was raised as Islamic and especially as I grew into adolescence like approached teenagehood I really felt like I was never listened to there's this expectation of who I should be and not who I was and things as simple as the dress I wanted to wear for a great aid graduation not being able to wear it after my mother and I bought it because my father didn't like it and it seems like such a small thing but I do remember you know just not understanding why you know my mom who bought it with me wouldn't stand up for me and how do we all feel so powerless to this one person and just feeling trapped in the systems that control my life and completely impotent to do anything about it because I was just a kid and you know I growing up you know you you may have more control over certain aspects of your life but you know there's this idea of just not ever feeling in control even like when I book a flight somewhere if I'm traveling alone I don't want to arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night because I don't like the world is just such a threatening place to women and that doesn't make me I mean that does scare me but also just makes me so angry all the time that I have to live this way and that you know my kids have to live this way even my husband recently told my daughter when she was you know worrying about something she's like you're 12 year you're 12 years old what do you have to worry about just about 12 year old girl I've everything to worry about and that's how I feel like I was so angry that we have to feel this way all the time so that anger did filter into these stories and I think anger is a very healthy expression sometimes and we're allowed to express it without feeling like we're just quote hysterical women yeah I agree so I'm gonna take a little tangent slightly just talk about short fiction it's only come on to my radar in the last maybe two years through yourself that this book and Finney and Burnett I'm not sure if you're familiar with their book price of cookies and there's a barber black was actually probably my first flash fiction writer is there a renaissance in short fiction or have I just been like oblivious to it my entire reading life I don't know if there isn't a renaissance just I've always read your fiction I mean I do notice other people being more open to it which is lovely but I've always loved short stories so for me I'm not really and I'm also noticing more people are open to it because of what I do for work so you know working in book publicity and trying to get someone to like pay attention to a collection of short stories is a lot harder than trying to get someone to pay attention to a deeply personal memoir or a novel the hardest thing to get anyone pay attention to is poetry but short stories are kind of just after poetry for difficulty level but you know people are being more open to it but again I think the the resistance to is again these narrative expectations that we have that are like any artistic expectations like when someone looks at a piece of abstract art and it's like I don't get it and dismisses it and walks away instead of looking at it and understanding that any kind of art whether it's a book or a play or a painting is it's a mirror to who we are and it tells us something our reaction to it tells us something about who we are and our feelings and our beliefs and our biases and prejudices about the world and I think sometimes when you have short fiction people are they want this like I will know I'm used to this you know narrative arc in the sense of closure and this wrap-up and this this breadth and short fiction especially short short fiction like mine denies them that and ask them to live without it and to see what that says about who they are and maybe their expectations for life in general and I think it's unsettling because it's so revealing but people don't really want to sit with those uncomfortable feelings and not everybody a lot of people don't want to sit with those feelings and do the work and say hey what does this say about me maybe maybe the art isn't the problem maybe maybe I'm the problem do you have to exercise a different writing muscle when you're writing short fiction versus poetry versus memoir yeah definitely you know it's memoir people usually want more and more and with such fiction you know no matter what I'm cutting out a lot I'm a rambler I always say to people if you want like a straight answer for me ask me to write it don't don't ask me to speak it because my brain is moving ten times faster than my mouth and I'm this is me medicated so my brain is slowed down but it's it's very difficult for me but yes I mean it is slightly different it's just a lot more controlled than a memoir you know you're giving information and every bit of information in this kind this like the brevity of these stories has to be relevant somehow I'd argue that in anything the information you're giving has to be relevant but sometimes you know you open a novel and it's like you know you you're suddenly in five pages of you know describing a communication system I'm very specifically talking about Michael Creighton Congo right now like I don't care Michael but a few sentences but you know I think about stuff like that and it seems like in longer forms you can they'll forgive you for rambling a bit whereas you really have to be concise with short fiction but the same goes for poetry the difference is with poetry is that not everything has to make narrative sense with poetry there can be a kind of non-secret or logic to everything so yes it's different muscles but I find it very fun to play it's it's just playing in a sandbox of different form and I like that I can see your poet mind in your short fiction because of the story I read this morning I think was called Pith in every story but this is the one my most recent one that I read you just have these beautiful little images and this story in particular was two women sitting outside a hospital on a bench during their break and one of them is peeling an orange and it's like I can see Halle the poet while I'm reading Halle the short fiction writer's work and it's pretty awesome well thank you I mean I everything starts with poetry for me and it either changes into something else or it doesn't change into something else so you know that particular book was just being at a story was just about kind of started with being at a hospital and my small little community and watching a woman with this like kind of purple rinse in her hair walking across a crosswalk and she looked like a she looked like a fiddlehead or a question mark because you know her spine was so pulled over and then at the same time I was doing an exercise in David Groff's where it was talking about mastering the art of the twist ending in a very short like it's like a mystery novel where there's this twist at the end but you're doing it in such a short period of time so I was trying to think about how that could happen and then I was reading a book later that night and somebody's Jim card fell out it's a somebody's old it was a second-hand book I guess somebody had used it as a bookmarker and their Jim card fell out and then it kind of all came together so okay that's very cool I love that insight I don't want to spoil then the twist ending for the story to let people pick up the book read it but thank you for that insight that's very cool I love that okay let's move on to another aspect of your writing life and that is River Street writing why don't you tell us about River Street writing and its mission yeah so River Street's mission is to celebrate the work of mostly small presses and small press authors in Canada I feel like Canadian authors or Canadian art in general whether you know be film or literature or anything it's often like we we're almost self-depreciating about it like or deprecating about it like it's it's like we see it as like second rate to what's put on the states or somewhere else and I think that Canadian literature is just as good in some cases not better and especially the stuff particularly coming up small presses I mean if I think of all my favorite books a top ten list I mean my top ten list changes constantly depending on where I am in my life and how I'm feeling but if I take like the top of the top that usually are consistently on that list they're mostly small presses that have released these books and I really felt like I wanted to spot like this more and get more people to pay attention to these books and understand how incredible they are and it kind of aligns with my feelings about being a conscious consumer on this planet right now about not just blindly buying what's constantly put in front of us because the there's certain companies that can afford to market at you all the time but to stay curious and to go out there and find what brings you joy and just not to accept what's you know what's presented with you blindly all the time because I find the things that bring me joy are often the things I discover myself or discover with a little bit of introspection and thought and I'm trying to put other books in front of people and say like hey you know these are really good too please just pay attention to them and when you walk into a bookstore you know be aware of the fact that what's what's placed in front of you for the most part indie bookstores do their part into champion books without sales basis then the big bookstores what you see in front of you have been paid to put there like the publishers paid to put this there and these crime spots and you know it doesn't necessarily mean the book is better than any other book I'm not saying that the books aren't good I mean there is wonderful literature coming out of big presses - I'm not pooping them but there's really great literature coming out of these small presses and I it's that kind of like the same kind of channel that fuels my feminine rage sevens like this kind of rage where my please pay attention to this literature like I it's such a it's what I do for a living but it's also such a passion project and I have to watch out because I'm I can be up till midnight doing things because there's a book that I'm representing that I just so desperately want people to pay attention to and I don't feel like it's getting the attention it deserves because everybody's inundated everybody's busy I get that but I want people to kind of re-enchant themselves with the magic of books and re-enchant themselves with the world like go and roll around in the grass then come in and read a book that you just picked willy-nilly off the shelf or that somebody that you've seen and you think wow I'm sure maybe not everyone's talking about this book on books to-gram but like actually I think it might be really cool to read and it sounds good and maybe I'll just like let myself be the judge and I don't have to blindly accept what other people tell me to read so I mean I'm guilty of blindly accepting sometimes and falling into trends too I get it but I think that we need to interrogate that impulse in ourselves yeah okay two follow-up questions one you can't tell us that you have like a top 10 and I know that it changes all the time mine does too but you said that there are some that are consistently on the top of your top 10 mm-hmm care to share those with us yeah so there's a wonderful book by Eva Samari that is a pen name I don't know who the author's real name is she's in she's an Iranian author who uses a pen name presumably I think for political reasons and she wrote a book published by Granica editions I believe in 2017 called Through the Sad Woods or Corpses Will Hang and it is just punching you in the gut slap you in the face then kiss you on the lip scourges like it's just I read this and I I've read it like four times since that and it's about a woman who is accused of murdering her mother and the the all the story is surrounding her and she says not very reliable narrative and you wonder if she's you know maybe mentally if she has a mental illness but should that undercut her narratives and the way that she tells the story is it's just so enchanting and raw and you know I just I don't want to give anything away so I really think people should read it and then I love Daphne de Morie so you know that's about as commercial as I get I heard like Frenchman's Creek I still remember reading that book for the first time where I was like I don't remember much about like a lot of firsts in my life but I remember exactly how it felt to sit down and read Daphne de Morie's Frenchman's Creek just one of the most gorgeous books ever Atunua Cebes, Aunt Hills of the Savannah, Babsi Sidwas, Cracking India, Love Those Books. I really enjoyed Jared Edson's The Boulevard which is something I was only introduced to last year and by the newly established galleon press out in the east coast of Canada Lee Thompson established it and blow your mind good about it's about Hemingway and Satan on a train ride through hell to go talk to Van Gogh who has painted the boulevard of the underworld in the image of heaven and God's coming down and the devil's really like oh God's gonna be pissed so they're trying to do something about it this is a really wonderful story that I probably didn't do justice right there of course poetry I love the work of Brahmin Wallace I just finished reading Most of All the Wanting by Amanda Merpah which is up there on my top poetry list that's a wonderful book about life after divorce and queer love and desire and joy and longing oh my gosh there's just so much I love George Eliot Clark's work I loved Wyla Falls it's wonderful book of poetry and one that's creeped in there fairly recently is David Margotius a simple carpenter which is published by radiant press so it's a great award-winning little press on the prairies and it's about a guy who wakes up on a boat and can't remember anything about himself and how or how he got there but he can speak every language that's spoken to him he can understand everything and perform a whole bunch of really skilled complex tasks he thinks he's just lucky but everyone else begins to think he's the messiah so it's a really thrilling wonderful work of magic realism and yeah I mean I could I could go on and on and on but that list will change and anything by Adele Wiseman sorry I have to add Adele she's amazing okay that's a fantastic list thank you no problem I read Jared Edson's The Boulevard earlier this year as well on your advice I believe you hooked me up with it yes I can't remember which the date of it but we I didn't interview him as well so anyone who's listening if you're interested go back and read it because I also loved that book it was fantastic isn't that just a wonderful example of these insanely bananas good books that are out there not enough people are talking about like how is everyone not talking about this book and it's because galleons a new press and even though Jared's published I think it's like five other books he doesn't have the marketing might of these massive presses behind him and I mean I'm not gonna say he's in obscurity I know he's gonna be at word on the street this fall in Toronto he's been invited there like I know he's had good things happen for him but more people need to read this book like it it makes me want to cry when I think no I know I mean people are missing this like it's like uh and then you see them talk about these these other books I don't believe there's such thing as like I'm happy anyone's reading I don't care if they're reading the back it was cereal box you know I don't care I'm happy when people read but you know there'll be these huge conversations about these other books and I'm like okay that's fine but those aren't the only books out there check this out your mind will be blown and couldn't get anyone to pay attention to us like screaming into the void someday but I have a lot of rage so I can I have a lot of energy to scream that's okay and I we're providing you a void right now so this is awesome yeah thank you now my second follow-up question and so that was your like favorites what are the books right now that you want to like scream into the void and have people read well definitely the boulevard definitely a simple carpenter I'm gonna try like Chinima and Chubby and Fabsey Sidwa amazing people amazing books but I feel like you know they're they're already in the canon so I'll back off ones like that my gosh there's so many uh I was I'm trying to be the ones that I just finished reading I'd read Pamela Malloy's Off the Track which is a collection of essays about train travel kind of a little bit during the pandemic but the pen she wrote this during the pandemic when she couldn't travel on trains and it was it's a really interesting kind of meandering engaging story about the about many things but mostly about the joy of slowing down and being more conscious of what's around us so obviously that really aligns with who I am and what I'm aiming for in my life that is a wonderful book that I think everyone should absolutely read there are there's all my gosh everything by radiant press and wall sack and win and latitude 46 I mean these are three small presses in Canada that every single book they put out I'm like oh my god like how are these known on every award list how are these not flying off the shelves like the editorial direction of these presses are it's very different you know latitude 46 is looking at writers from northern Ontario specifically they do some great historical fiction for instance really wonderful poetry but there's this really wonderful feeling of just being rooted in the the world in these books so and then you know radiant press is doing some fascinating things with like speculative and speculative fiction even fantasy and melding genre they also have great poets and you know short story collections so them and then walls I can win has a you know very outward looking nonfiction like it's so it's not going to be like a memoir like the one I wrote about mixed race mental illness but nonfiction that looks out at the world so really wonderful and then fabulous poetry in really just boundary-breaking fiction and you know if I think of uh I'm getting my name is mixed up then berman gans book the years shall run like rabbits that that was just published just this year by then it's just incredible so um in its like sci-fi horror literary fiction like that spans the course of centuries of this book like talk about my short fiction just taking really short time and this one's like spanning millennia the time frame of this book it's just incredible so yeah I mean it wasn't very helpful with specific books but like the publishers I'd like to you know shout out in general yeah I know they all deserve a shout-out it's true I've you hooked me up with books from all three and we'll second win has become one of my favorite two if I go and look at their catalog I'm just like that they all sound amazing and they're extremely local to me like kind of I drive by their little office sometimes and so yeah yeah and I think that we just have to stop thinking that I mean I I feel like I'm repeating like repeating myself about what I say about being at the poet laureate of a largely rural community we have to stop thinking that art and talent exists as somewhere outside of us like that but it's somewhere in some big metropolis or it has to be in New York Paris I'll like I don't you know at least Toronto yeah no no it's it's amazing art and artists are like right here in our communities in Hamilton like it's right here we don't we have to stop looking elsewhere for for amazing art and artists every it's right here and I think I love what the wolves I can win editor Paul Vermiche said in a CBC interview on commotion which is we value what we celebrate now be wonderful if we celebrated what we valued but that's actually not what happens it's only once people get on board with celebrating something and there's some noise and trendiness around it that will actually start to value it and River Street's mission is to be like okay well if that's the way we have to play then let's start celebrating it and then maybe people will start valuing it because it's already valuable but people aren't seeing the value in it yeah that's that's perfect that's perfect for your mission I love that thank you okay I'm going to ask a couple more book recommendations what are you currently reading or like most recently read yeah okay so I'm I'm on a journey for a few awards right now so I've been reading a lot of submissions for that and I can't talk with so well I will say Saskatchewan's got some wonderful poets um and uh for what else did I just finished reading oh I just jumped into Wells I can win um the first book in David Peter Durbershauer's The Cross series it's called the Mona Lisa Sacrifice and The Cross series is really fascinating even about how it's being republished this is a reissue because the series was originally published by a press that is now defunct and the it's now kind of been resurrected by Moles I Can Win who is also resurrecting their popular press imprint which is kind of like more speculative work and it follows the series follows this guy who can't die and and he keeps being resurrected as well and it's like a a lost soul who was born into the body of Christ when Christ woke up and became and it's just thrilling and fascinating and I'm so addicted to it I was up late till four o'clock last night and I missed my early morning gym time because and it was worth it though it was absolutely worth it it's it's so thrilling oh yeah so I recommend everyone get their hands on this series the whole series is being reissued so you don't have like weight you can read the first three and I think the fourth is going to come out next year or later but you can get like your hands on all three this fall which is amazing when you don't have to wait between books in the series it's super absorbing yes I've just added it to my TBR as soon as you said like wakes up in the body of Jesus I'm like done but like he's not like he is not like at all me is a very complicated flawed individual you know if you're looking for moral rectitude you're gonna have to look elsewhere awesome okay thank you for that yes what about future projects yourself what's on the horizon for you yeah so I have after this book is released I have a year of nothing coming out which is nice from my perspective of the tireless task of promoting one's work mm-hmm I mean you always have to kind of promote your work unless you want your books to stop selling and be pulped so there's that but and then I have a novel coming out my first novel it's like I was trying to like just get a whole bunch of like genre not genres forms of the way there's like non-fiction then poetry now a short fiction than a novel and then I have a kids book coming out in the next year so 2026 is the novel it's called the unraveling of ooh and it's coming out with Tamil test press which is another really great small press in Ontario in Canada and then it's about it's completely narrated by a sock puppet and it kind of wants its mission is a lot of things talk you know examining how women uphold the patriarchy examining again asking readers to examine what we expect of narratives because it's entirely narrated by the sock puppet and the person the puppet is attached to doesn't say anything directly the whole novel it's it's asking readers to put their faith in a neurodivergent perspective without assuming that neurodivergent people cannot adequately narrate their whole own lives and kind of taking that power back and it's it's my first book where I really confidently I think confidently stepped into a queer space and tell a queer story because you know as someone who's married to cis man but is not straight I often feel strange about taking up space there like I don't belong there but in this story I firmly tell a queer story which is scary and exciting for me at the same time and then the children's book coming up with growing auditions in 2027 is inspired by my son and it's my son's love of falcony and I'm working with the wonderful San Antonio artist Katie Powell who actually did the cover of widow fantasies and she is illustrating the book for me so I'm very excited about that and then I'm currently working on finally circling back and doing poems again so I'm working on a collection of poems that of occasional verse so verse that celebrates or not celebrates that commemorates an occasion about occasional first that kind of tackles with how we can celebrate the passing of time knowing that what time passing means so it's kind of from my perspective for someone who lives with really debilitating existential OCD which is a kind of OCD that fixates terrifyingly on questions of morality and or not morality, mortality and existence so that's what I'm working on now but I'm doing really slowly and thankfully poetry is incredibly gracious and patient and I don't feel that mad rush to write that I often feel with other forms I'm just kind of plucking away at that as I go. Okay so one a sock puppet with a queer story yes please yes I cannot wait for that two for your child the children's book yes the cover of widow fantasies is stunning oh thank you that is going to be a beautiful book like physically beautiful and then with your words so that's I'm so excited for you for that as well and then I'm excited for you to have another poetry because I loved your poetry as well well thank you so much I'm excited about that and I I every time I feel pressured to write I think about Stephen Hyton we interviewed him on River Street before he unfortunately passed and he said something that always sticks with me is that now poetry is always a joy because queer wise queer wise the stakes couldn't be lower and it sounds so like terrible to say but it's like it's true though like I with the novel I wrote it in like a year with widow fantasies I wrote very quickly and it was like this oh there's I felt this pressure to like get these stories out or get this story out especially with the novel where you're living in this world and like again it's narrated by a sock puppet I actually made a sock puppet and talked to the sock puppet throughout the year and it was very strange and absorbing time in my life and very humiliating and more refined for my children they like put the puppet away when people come over so it was it was a lot I felt very consumed poetry gives me space to breathe and I'd have to mention that I already have a cover or at least a cover I'd like to present the publisher with for the unraveling of oo which is the sock puppet story and it is also by kitty pow I asked her I sent her a picture of my sock puppet and she created a prototype of it and then painted a portrait of the closet I'm a little bit of safft no this long puppet must go with you to all your authors yeah well she even emailed she even emailed me along with the portrait so I've just tortured like I have portraits she painted of all my children I'm a little bit of a fan of Katie's works I've tortured she painted of my children and then I have a portrait that she painted and mailed me of the puppet yeah it's just it sounds a little bit bananas but when you see the work and I hope people fall in love with ecology paul who is the puppet that's the puppet's name as much as I did I mean it sounds wonky to say I fell in love with a complete you know figment of my imagination but I did no it doesn't kind of want because readers do it all the time with the characters that writers create so no it I think it says something for the character that you have fallen in love with someone that you've created so thank you okay holly thank you so much for joining us um this comes out just shortly just before or no sorry just shortly after your widow fantasies is published and then just I think shortly before so I will shortly and Rebecca we will be seeing you in person at the Eden Mills Writers Festival September 8th in Eden Mills and we are super excited to see you I'm so excited to see you here at my favorite festival I love this my favorite day of the year I love Eden Mills it's incredible I was so floured acid and like just twitter painted to be invited I was because I'm a publicist but my invitation had nothing to do with me it was totally on my amazing publisher for getting me into that no when I saw when they released their all the authors for this year's festival immediately Rebecca and I were texting each other we're like oh my god holly is going to be there we are so excited to see you there well thank you I'm also going to be at the ampersand festival which is in Toronto I'm moderating a panel on writing real life and I've just started diving into the books that I'm going to be the books from the authors I'm going to be interviewing and that's incredible and I will also be at Wordstock Sudbury on two panels so yeah and when are they do you know the dates off hand so the ampersand on October 6th it's the weekend of the friday saturday sunday I believe and then Wordstock Sudbury is on November 2nd and I think it's the first second and third which is a wonderful event up in Sudbury and I've never been to Sudbury so I'm excited yeah me either I'm excited for you so thank you so much holly I'm so glad that you're like in my bookish life thank you so much for being here thank you thank you thank you happy reading everyone thank you for joining us on our bookish journey if you enjoyed this episode please consider subscribing reading and reviewing canada reads american style wherever you listen you can connect with the podcast america on instagram at canada reads american style and with terra at on a branch reads until next time keep reading
