Overview

At the beginning of a new writing project -- whether it's the first page of a new novel or less ambitious project, writers often experience exhilaration, fear, dread, or a mixture of other emotions. For Kristjana Gunnars, the call of a new project is ""like someone you don't know knocking on your door -- you either choose to let the person in or not. It's both exciting and dangerous to start a new manuscript."" This book is an engagement with that 'stranger' called writing. Creative or imaginative writing is a complex process that involves more than intellect alone. Writers make use of everything: their sensibilities, history, culture, knowledge, experience, education, and even their biology. These essays seek out, and gather into a discussion, what writers have said about their own experiences in writing. Although the writers are from around the world and of very different backgrounds, the commonality of their remarks brings home the realisation that writers everywhere are grappling with similar problems -- with the seemingly simple problems of when, where, why, and what to write, but also larger questions such as the relationship between writer and society, or issues of privacy, appropriation, or homelessness. While none of these questions can be definitively answered, they can be fruitfully discussed. Although these essays originated as questions posed in creative writing seminars, they've grown into companion texts for both writers and readers who want to participate in a conversation about what writers do.

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9780889204553

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A pleasure to read....This book should be of interest to general readers and to students and scholars interested in literary theory. It is very beautifully, simply, accessibly written, and addresses many of the theoretical issues that have preoccupied Canadian writers over the past two decades....One of its strengths is its firm location in Canadian letters, but with a profoundly internationalist, particularly European, informing perspective....It also pioneers several new areas: [including] the link between spirituality and writing. - Di Brandt, award-winning poet and author of Now You Care

Author Information

Kristjana Gunnars has received the George Bugnet Award for fiction; the Stephan G Stephansson Award for poetry; and the McNally Robinson Award for fiction. She's been nominated for the Books in Canada/Smith Books First Novel Award, and the Governor General's Award for non-fiction. She has taught at the University of Alberta

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