Author Archives: Andrea

Ballet Victoria strives for fusion

Dances with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ballet Victoria, Royal Theatre, Victoria
May 30-31

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

Ballet Victoria is known for its innovative, eclectic choreography, and Dances with Wolfgang effectively demonstrates the fusion of classic and contemporary. Paul Destrooper, the artistic director of the company, choreographed this latest offering.  His personal touch is evident not only in the moves but also the sounds.

Destrooper gave a short introduction to the audience May 30, explaining that the ballet is not a coherent narrative but a series of linked vignettes or images meant to evoke emotion. He noted that musicians, like dancers, face challenges, and focused on the difficulties Mozart had. In a smooth transition, Destrooper spoke of the problems life flung at Freddie Mercury, whose music with Queen is used in the ballet. Most of the music is Mozart’s, with one selection, “Skyfall,” by Adele. As the music of a dance performance affects whether or not I can enjoy it, the choices (especially all the Mozart) were a joy.

The idea of the ballet is to show how Mozart’s imagination was stifled by his job as a court composer. The role of Mozart was danced by Matthew Cluff, and the Muse was Andrea Bayne. The King (Geoff Malcolm, in what may be his last performance with the company) and the Queen (Keika Hayashi) made a memorable couple visually. The rest of the company played attendants, musicians, courtiers, music, and instruments. Destrooper played Death, whose embrace ultimately frees Mozart from the burden of conformity.

The stark set allowed focus on movement. One prop was a table that served several purposes, the most exceptional being a piano with the dancers’ legs becoming the piano keys. Fog infused much of the performance, lending a dreamy quality when Mozart was at the height of his powers, then an oppressive atmosphere when he was suffering at court. The lighting worked well with the clean stage and fog.

The company is a young one, and it’s facing financial trouble, an all-too-often-heard lament from the arts sector in general. Destrooper’s blend of old and new may not be for everyone, but the audience on May 30, while small, was definitely appreciative. The dancers are competent, and the troop is developing. Cluff and Bayne do an excellent job with the varying needs of their roles, and the Attendants (Parisa Mehgregan, Hikari Shigeno, Azusa Kishida, and Ayaka Miyazaki) looked especially entrancing in their matching white dresses while they swirled elegantly. And the Attendants injected humour into what is at times a sad story. The timing needs some work, but the Attendants were a pleasure to behold.

While Ballet Victoria’s reputation is partially built on synthesis, it does get a tiny bit routine to be sitting waiting for the next surprise. Inserting a moonwalk into ballet gets attention, but after a while, the movements seem to be created more for surprise than to serve aesthetics or narrative.

The company is also committed to breaking certain barriers: Andrea Bayne sang “Skyfall,” then moved smoothly back into role as the Muse. (That took guts—Bayne’s voice is not Adele’s.) Having expressed my reservations about the eclectic nature of the choreography, I am determined to see more of Ballet Victoria’s performances to try to understand more fully what this company has to offer. And make no mistake—this company has a great deal to offer.

Candace Fertile is Coastal Spectator’s poetry editor and a local reviewer.

Genetic sleuth tells engaging tale

The Jugglerʼs Children
By Carolyn Abraham
Random House, $32, 380 pages

Reviewed by Lynne Bowen

Carolyn Abraham is a prize-winning Canadian journalist and author whose impressive list of writing credits includes such subjects as crime, immigration, politics and medicine. Having written about topics as varied as Einsteinʼs brain and Dolly, the first mammalian clone, Abraham has earned praise in Canada, England and America for her ability to make difficult scientific topics understandable and engaging.

This ability is put to the test in her latest book, The Jugglerʼs Children, in which she describes her seven-year-long search for the origins of two of her great-grandfathers through the new discipline of genetic genealogy. Family lore had given these men–one a murderer and a juggler, the other a shipʼs captain–exotic origins but little other information.

Like a modern-day detective, Abraham submits cheek swabs from various of her male relatives for genetic testing of their Y chromosomes and travels to such far-flung places as the Nilgiri hills of southern India and a beach on Jamaicaʼs north shore. In both locations, she follows leads that may or may not turn into hard evidence, but each newly-proven connection is a triumph for both the writer and the reader.

The use of the present tense works well in Abrahamʼs description of her detective work, but when she explains the science behind genetic testing of Y chromosomes–the human chromosome capable of carrying information precise enough to follow a family back in time–she runs the risk of losing the interest of non-expert readers.

Making a technical process understandable to a layperson while still maintaining that personʼs interest is a challenge for a nonfiction writer, but a necessary one. In The Jugglerʼs Children, Abraham successfully maintains my interest as she explains matches and markers, surnames and generations in clear and metaphoric writing. But when she takes me into a complicated discussion of haplogroups, haplotypes and nucleotides, her prose bogs down. This happens regularly in the otherwise gripping account of her quest. The discovery, however, of an elderly auntʼs address book or a headstone hidden in the Jamaican undergrowth rejuvenates the prose.

An astounding number of people have sent cheek swabs for testing at one of several genetic labs in the hope of finding a connection to royalty or a trace of an indigenous ancestor. What the testing reveals is always a surprise, but not necessarily what they were hoping for. Rather, as Abraham discovered, we all have ancestors from both sides of the whip: ancestors who were slave-owners and ancestors who were slaves.

I found reassurance in the message that Abraham brings to her readers in the last pages of The Jugglerʼs Children. Given that we are all descended from the first organism identified as a human being, we all carry that personʼs genetic information. And as the population of the world continues to become more and more mobile, we are all inching ever closer to becoming a blend of all racial groups with little to distinguish one from another. We are all family.

Lynne Bowen lives in Nanaimo and is the author of Whoever Gives Us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia.

Queer Across Canada

The Rogue Folk Club presents
Kate Reid
Queer Across Canada CD Release
Saturday, June 8, Doors at 7 pm
St. James Hall, 3213 West 10th Ave, Vancouver
Tickets $20 | Members $16
Accessible, All ages & Licensed Event

Sure same-sex marriage is legal these days, and gay people don’t get fired from their jobs like they used to, but the growing number of queer parents and openly queer youth means that young people are facing homophobia like never before.

Moved by stories of queer teens and kids with queer parents feeling isolated and ostracized, singer-songwriter and musical comedienne Kate Reid embarked on her most audacious recording project yet. She conducted 74 interviews with queer parents, queer kids, and straight kids of queer parents and used them to create Queer Across Canada, a pioneering collection of songs for queer families that bursts with a spirit of radical celebration of the rainbow spectrum.

For more on Kate Reid, visit her website, or check out The Coastal Spectator interview we did with Reid in October.

Alec Dempster explores roots via images and words

Ontario artist Alec Dempster was born in Mexico but moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old. He recently came out with a unique two-fold expression of his heritage with the book Lotería Jarocha: Linoleum Prints, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, and with the CD, Nuevos Caminos A Santiago (New Roads to Santiago), produced by Anona Music. Lynne Van Luven talked to Dempster via email, after listening obsessively to the CD and reading his book.

Alec, I’m a bit confused about the “birth order” here: which did you do first, the book or the CD, and how did one give rise to each other?

First, in 1999-2000, I did the prints which appear in the book. Then Kali and I released our first CD in 2006. We released our second CD, Nuevos Caminos a Santiago, in May 2012. Around that time, I had already started writing the texts for the book. Composing, arranging and recording was very absorbing. I wasn’t able to think about anything else. The same occurred with the writing of the texts. I didn’t stop playing, but I was not creating much new music–although we were working on eight new compositions in the same period with support from a Popular Music Grant from the Ontario Arts Council. We were a bit late submitting our grant report because I was so involved with the book project and then promoting the launch.

I have been to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and to Xalapa as well, so I did know a little bit about “son jarocho,” but I was totally ignorant about the role Lotería plays in Mexican and Latin American social life. Can you explain it a bit more for this gringa? It seems to have a vital cultural importance.

I was attracted to lotería because the graphics are so engrained in Mexican popular culture, even though most of the images aren’t very “Mexican.” The loterías I have created have more Mexican iconography than the traditional lotería. It does raise the question of what and who is Mexican. I am like that in a sense: born in Mexico but not brought up with lotería by parents who are not Mexican. However, I was exposed to a broad range of Latin American and Spanish culture, mostly through my father’s friends. The cultural importance of lotería has to do with the fact that most people in Mexico played lotería with their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and cousins. I have seen people really enjoy the playing of the lotería but I think the pleasure lies as much in the fact that the family is doing it together as in the playing of the game itself. I have also seen it in more public social events such as church fundraisers in outdoor venues. There are certainly places where more importance is given to the lotería as a past-time like Cosamalopan in Southern Veracruz. I have heard that Campeche has a unique version of the lotería. I am not sure about Northern Mexico. In order to do my loterías, I  did not do a lot of research into the game itself. I did some but my focus was on the themes I had chosen for my loterías.

As you just mentioned, you have a fascinating background: you were born in Mexico City, came to Canada as a young boy, and then were raised in Toronto. How old were you when you returned to Mexico to live, how long were you there, and what were you looking for?

I must have been about 20 when I returned to Mexico for the first time, and my Spanish was quite basic. I went to see the film Danzón which takes place in Veracruz, and enjoyed it but didn’t understand much of the dialogue. I knew enough to get around and stay out of trouble — it seems I was there on two occasions for a month each. The second time I think my grandfather had given me some money to take driving lessons but I spent it on a plane ticket, and I still don’t know how to drive.  The first trip I had no expectations but planned to visit a small town in the hills called Quetzalan, because I had a vague recollection of the place . . . there where some striking photographs my parents took when we went there and I must have been about three. Other than that, I spent time in Mexico City visiting museums, markets and also Tepoztlán, where I eventually lived for a year. Although I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was extremely happy being in Mexico. It helped that my hosts where my padrino and his wife, two of the most generous people you could imagine and extremely connected with diverse aspects of Mexican culture. Good cooks as well. I ended up very taken by Mexican artists such as the muralists, and Tamayo as well as Toledo but Mexico City is also a place where you are likely to see exhibitions of contemporary art of all kinds from all over the world.

The linocuts in Loteria Jarocha are beautiful, and the descriptions you have created of them teach a reader a great deal about this aspect of Mexican culture. Are these stories and images in danger of being lost as the great wheel of Americanismo grinds away at your birth-country’s traditions?

The word “Americanismo” has a different connotation for me. I  know you mean USA which is definitely imposing itself on Mexico as it does all over. Canada also is exploiting Mexico’s mineral resources. A Canadian project to do open air silver mining close to the Port of Veracruz has been put on hold due to grass-roots resistance. Stories are always in danger of disappearing without the pervasive influence of foreign cultural domination. However, stories and traditions also have the ability to resist, as well as absorb new elements. Good things have also come from the US, such as the remarkable interest in son jarocho from people living in California to name just one state. The result has been culural exchange, economic growth for instrument makers, and musicians who are constantly travelling to the USA. to teach and perform. This year, three different groups that use son jarocho as an important part of their music were nominated for awards. That said,  there are languages disappearing, ceremonies being forgotten and many stories  are no longer passed on from one generation to the next.

You sing with your wife, Kali Nino, on Nuevos Caminos a Santiago. Is your musical group Café Con Pan something new, and how does it tie in with your artistic self?

Our musical collaboration goes back quite a few years, but Café Con Pan became something quite different and more ambitious since we moved to Toronto in 2009. We had performed here before that but it is only recently that we have made such an effort to forge our own identity within the framework of son jarocho. We continue to play the traditional repertoire but are also playing our own songs which we want to be recognized for. I feel like two different people, the musician and the visual artist, but they complement each other because my visual art often adorns our CDs, posters and even clothes that we wear on stage. I fell fortunate to be able to jump from one art form to another while I also realize that sometimes one discipline will require complete attention. It is not always possible to juggle the two.

When wool and words entwine

FictionKNITstas Reading Series
Dede Crane, Gillian Campbell, Nicole Dixon and Stella Harvey
Monday, May 27, 7 pm
Beehive Wool Shop, 1700 Douglas St, Victoria

Reviewed by Liz Gusul

“Colourful place, isn’t it?”

Surrounded by hanging skeins of cotton and baskets of wool, a chatty group gathers and mingles at Beehive Wool Shop in downtown Victoria. Some members of the group are knitters, and some are not. Some buy yarn and patterns, dreaming of their next project, while others stroke the knitted samples around the shop. All are readers and literature enthusiasts, gathered for a knit-related literary event hosted by Victoria writer Dede Crane.

Since 2006, FICTIONistas has organized annual events such as this evening at Beehive Wool Shop, which will include readings from three books by Canadian women writers. The events were conceived as a way to promote works by female authors, and this year’s event, titled FictionKNITstas, focuses its attention also on knitting.

Each of the authors involved in the FICTIONistas tour has been paired with a local knitter, who read and had time to reflect on the written work before embarking on another sort of creative process. Whether an existing pattern was used, or the knitter chose to create her own design, a hand-knit garment was created for each book. The inspirations for these knitted pieces could come from any aspect of the book. Some knitters focused on concrete images, textures, or even colours of the book, others on thematic imagery or cultural context.

Gillian Campbell, author of The Apple House wore a bright red shawl, matching the colour of the novel’s cover. The outline of a boxy farmhouse and two trees on the shawl set the scene for the passage Campbell read from her novel, a book, she says, about a girl with big feet who happens to marry a shoemaker, about a widow, about a life.

Reading from Nicolai’s Daughters, Stella Harvey describes how the textured stitches of her shawlette reflect the mountains of Greece, where sections of her book are set, and how its brilliant blue hue is an iconic colour in Greek culture. She hints at a tragic and not much remembered event in Greece’s past, but reads tender and amusing passages about cultural separation in families, and inter-familial relationships.

After a cancelled flight in Cape Breton, Nicole Dixon hadn’t had the chance to connect with her knitter, and was without her knitted garment. She explains however, that it is a cozy wrap sweater, as the knitter felt that the characters in High-Water Mark, Dixon’s collection of stories, needed a hug, and she wished to create something that would offer both comfort and warmth. Dixon reads the story High-Water Mark which, although bitingly funny, does evoke a blustery cold feeling.

Blue-grey light filters through the windows, and buses roll along Douglas Street as the readings conclude. The books which were sampled tonight are available for sale. The group lingers, fingering the brightly coloured skeins of silk, mohair, and merino.

“Will you sign my book?” I overhear. “And are you a knitter?” someone asks, as the writers autograph copies of their books for patrons. Whether leaving Beehive Wool Shop with a new book, a ball of yarn, or both, all of tonight’s patrons are inspired to spin a yarn, whether literary or literal. The event kicks off a Canada-wide tour, visiting eleven locations over the next week and a half. To view additional tour dates and locations, or for more information about the FICTIONistas, please visit fictionistascanada.wordpress.com.

Liz Gusul is an avid reader and knitter who lives in Victoria.

Po’ Girl Awna Teixeira tours with solo album

Awna Teixeira and Jennifer Louise Taylor
Sunday, June 2, 2-4 pm
Spiral Cafe, 418 Craigflower RD, Victoria
$10 at the door

Awna Teixeira has toured the world from Africa to Spain and back again with internationally renowned roots band Po’ Girl. She is currently doing a tour in support of her first solo album, Where the Darkness Goes. With a uniquely sultry voice and incredible songwriting, Teixeira brings beautifully styled music to the world.

She joins popular local folk musician, Jennifer Louise Taylor, for an afternoon show this Sunday, at Spiral Cafe.

Six Tudor roses open after death

Til Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII
@ The Uno Festival, Intrepid Theatre
Written and Directed by Ryan Gladstone
Starring Tara Travis
May 29-June 1

Reviewed by Leah Callen

Tara Travis performs a theatrical feat in Til Death as she channels seven ghosts: Henry VIII and his six wives. The former queens of England, now stripped down to their skivvies, fall into purgatory. Poor Anne Boleyn is bodyless while the shameless hussy Catherine Howard somehow coaxed St. Peter to return her body (there is sex in Heaven, folks). The British bureaucratic angel informs the women that only one of them will be allowed to spend eternity in Royal Heaven with Henry. They must vote amongst themselves: who did their precious patriarch love the most? Let the irony begin as women who were divorced, abandoned or chopped up by the man fight to win his heart

The grandiose drama queen Catherine of Aragon slurs the feisty Anne Boleyn as being a puta, and the horsey Anne of Cleves becomes the naive butt of all their jokes. Catherine Howard is the oversexed valley girl of the group, missing a few gemstones upstairs as she flirts with St. Peter by swooshing her skirt. Katherine Parr remains the most stalwart and patient, having survived four husbands.

I marvelled at how one woman could emote such varying voices and I bought it, sometimes forgetting this was one actor. Each character has her idiosyncrasies; each even reacts uniquely to finding herself in underwear–from indignant to self-indulgent. This individuality carries through to physical gestures, accents, and nicknames. Catherine of Aragon demands her formal name Caterina while childlike Catherine Howard prefers to be known as Catie, Queen of the Fairies. The play is peppered with modern slang, which spices up the farce and makes this otherwise historical harem more human. Alongside the laughs are some poignant confessions from the Tudor roses as they open up to each other on the other side. We hear their romantic regrets and secret hardships.

Though these queens and their rivalries are familiar to anyone who knows the history, the ending is anything but. Things are not in Heaven as they were on earth. I think I was most pleasantly surprised by the prim Jane Seymour. The physical way in which she explains childbirth to Anne was too far-fetched for me, but I loved the courageous thorns she grows. The six ex-wives bond in unimaginable ways with uplifting results.

Personally, I was gobsmacked that the nymphet Catherine Howard wasn’t Henry’s first choice as a companion for all eternity. The kitten-in-heat seems like a philanderer’s paradise. Though the queen whom Henry once called his rose without a thorn was one of the most strongly developed characters, her superficiality robs us of hearing her pain about dying so young. Her ghost is said to scream to this day, so that seems an oversight. Still, Catie was the star of this show for me.

This Anglican Heaven is full of red tape, but open-minded about sex and gay marriage. As an Anglican, I had to laugh out loud at the religious pokes. Though the angels seem very forgiving, I still think Henry VIII should go to hell.

Leah Callen is a budding poet-playwright-screenwriter at the University of Victoria.

Third-person narrative distances reader

Caught
By Lisa Moore
House of Anansi, 304 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Lisa Moore roots her readers firmly in 1978 Canada in her new novel–problem is, reading this book often felt like being stuck, then trying to run through mud.

Perhaps this is fitting for the beginning of the book as the protagonist, David Slaney, escapes from prison on the east coast, where he’s been held for four years after trying to smuggle marijuana from Colombia to Newfoundland via boat. Slaney runs through the muck and woods in search of a logging road, where he has been told a driver will come for him. He will either escape, or be caught. But he has to go. “There are mistakes that stand in the centre of an empty field and cry out for love.”

Slaney hasn’t escaped to live a quiet life in hiding. He needs to get to his friend and accomplice, Hearn, in Vancouver. He wants to try again, to go back to Colombia. The marijuana will make them millionaires. But it’s not just the money that’s at stake: 25-year-old Slaney wants to get Jennifer, the love of his life, and her daughter back. He wants to be free.

Readers follow Slaney across Canada, down to South America, then back again—with many stops and starts along the way. I often felt like there were many false endings, while the starts felt glazed over. It seemed as though Moore was planning the route as she was writing. She would leave Slaney in a place for a while, in which nothing would happen, and then in the next chapter we were on the road again. As I read, I felt as though I was always missing the middle of things. There is also a great emotional distance from the reader and Slaney, as the story is written in third person. I wanted to be rooting for this character and, even though he’s an anti-hero; I didn’t want him to get caught. But I felt a little too distant from him to care.

But the novel is worth reading for writing like this:

He whispered to himself. He spoke a stream of profanity and he said a prayer to the Virgin Mary, in whom he half believed. Mosquitoes touched him all over. They settled on his skin and put their fine things into him and they were lulled and bloated and thought themselves sexy and near death.

Moore’s characters are fascinating and full of flaws you can’t help but love as soon as you’re introduced to them.

‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ Slaney said.

I was in Korea, the old man said. I saw an arm on the ground. Just the arm. Not attached to nothing. Just lying there in the leaves.

Pops is decorated, the girl said. He got a few medals in there he could show you sometime.

We were marching, he said. I just saw this arm. It was lying on the dirt. Wet leaves stuck on it. That was one thing I saw. I saw a lot of things. You’ve done some travelling, have you?

Yes sir, Slaney said.

Caught is a story about loss, love, risk and betrayal. It tries to redefine innocence and it makes the reader question what is inevitable and what isn’t, and how a person chooses to move forward in order to get what he wants. Moore’s prose is meditative, but the story is about a chase. Whether the two can work together, I’m still unsure.

Jenny Boychuk is a reader and writer who lives in Victoria.

Swept off my feet by a lady and an iron horse

SPIN
May 25, The Metro, Uno Festival, Victoria
Written and performed by Evalyn Parry

Reviewed by Leah Callen

SPIN is a fun trip through time and metaphor on a three-speed steed steered by the talented Evalyn Parry with Brad Hart as back-up. I can honestly say this was the first time I’d ever heard someone play a bicycle like a musical instrument. That alone is worth hearing. The play uses song, spoken word, and monologue in an ode to cycling and ingenuity. As we ride through the scenic past, we are reminded how important it is to keep on trailblazing.

Though I am not a bike lover (yet), I enjoyed the obscure stories of these biker women; SPIN really spoke to me. Annie Londonderry teaches us a lesson in guts: the first woman to cycle around the world taking only her courage, a pearl-handled revolver, and a change of underwear with her. She left her children and husband behind–all thanks to an alleged bet. And a song about Amelia Bloomer, an early pro-pants activist, encourages us to fight for our political legs.

Parry’s wordplay is both bright and dark; the word spin means progress and propaganda, freedom and commercialism. She shows us the front and back wheel of every story, the good and bad with ironic bitter sweetness. Parry keeps it real. Steampunky costuming was a spunky sidekick to her monologues. She stepped visually in and out of characters, helping us travel a few miles in other women’s pants. Film also added visual poetry and joie de vivre to the staging.

Overall, it was fascinating watching Brad Hart bowing spokes and thumping away on a bicycle seat as if it was the most natural drum kit in the world. Many of the duets featured Parry taking the low vocal roads while Hart took the higher harmony. Even the music had an unexpected, feminist twist. The rhyme and repetition of the poetry evoked the circular motion of a bike brilliantly. I was happy to tag along on this joyride in the audience.

There is humour and honesty here. As Parry says, the heart is the motor. SPIN moves through the outer spokes to the hub as her performance travels from the historical to the personal–and what you get is inspirational. Though the old adage saying, “It’s not the destination but the journey that counts,” is a touch clichéd, this was a heart-opening performance which reflects back on the past with fresh eyes, and compels us to carry forward with bravery. Parry asks us: why settle for friction when you can choose momentum? This show is about the female quest for autonomy, but it’s also about the magical freedom we all experience when we take off life’s training wheels and fly down unknown avenues under our own steam.

Uno Fest runs until June 1st. Full calendar available on their website.

Leah Callen is a budding poet-playwright-screenwriter at the University of Victoria.

Journalist launches debut novel

Journalist Cathi Bond divides her time between the streets of Toronto and the fields of rural Ontario.  With her lively focus on contemporary culture and the Internet, Bond was a columnist on Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) with Nora Young, and is a regular contributor to Spark, both on CBC Radio. She also does movie podcasts for Rabble and, with Nora Young, has created The Sniffer, a podcast on “New Directions in Trends and Tech.” Bond’s latest project is her first novel, Night Town, published by Iguana Press. The unstoppable Bond is now writing its sequel.  She recently answered questions from Lynne Van Luven.

Cathi, most listeners and viewers know you as a journalist, from TV and especially from CBC Radio. What precipitated your move from cultural reporting into novel writing?

I haven’t completely moved from cultural writing or broadcasting. As you’d know, the number of print jobs in Canada has diminished significantly in the last decade. And landing a steady gig as a cultural columnist at any of the big papers is nearly a miracle. In fact, many columnists who had that security have lost it and now have to get in the pit and compete for every column they write. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to work part time at Spark and have the privilege to write about shifts in technology that truly excite me.

In part, this new employment reality steered me towards taking a shot at fiction, but Night Town was a story that had been percolating inside of me for years. So I saved some cash, decided to live relatively poor and took the time to write it. I guess you could say that Night Town was always close to number one on my bucket list, and now it’s completed and I’m very happy with the result.

Night Town has been optioned by Back Alley Films. Do you think being a media personality helped the process at all?

Absolutely. It’s really unfair, but I think it’s true. Having any kind of name recognition, any kind of brand makes you instantly more attractive. It makes the project easier to sell to the funding bodies that hand out the money.

That said, having a feature film credit makes you worth more. That credit proves that you can do the work. I was very lucky that Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, the story editor behind Back Alley’s award winning series Durham County, edited my novel. Yet another brand, or seal of approval, attached to the project.

Maddy Barnes is a captivating and credible character. I know this is a work of fiction, but I cannot help feeling there is a little spark of personal experience at the heart of this novel. True?

Good instincts. I think most writers, whether they admit it or not, do create from personal experience. Especially on a first novel. When I was very young, an absolutely horrible thing happened to me and my family. It was “the moment” that defined my life. So I took that moment and fictionalized it. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag if I tell your readers that the novel takes place, in large part, at the corner of Yonge and Dundas on the mean streets of Toronto during the early 1970s.

I wanted to write about that period in Toronto’s history. Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the world and, other than in  Ondattje’s “The Skin of the Lion” and by Atwood (a wee bit in her early work), it has never been mythologized in any significant way. I tried to change that by making Toronto a character. In fact, Night Town is the first in a trilogy of novels that follows Toronto and a single family from the dawn of the Great Depression, through to the arrival of the new millennium.

People call you a “podcast pioneer” and now you have a blog, so I wonder if it’s not a bit “retrograde” for you to become a novelist who’s now working on a sequel to her first book. What about all those “books-are-dead” prognostications?

I thought about this a lot, but I refuse to believe that reading is dead. The telling of stories is built into our DNA. It’s how we carry our history; it’s how we instruct; it’s how we delight. But is the book as we know it dead? I think we’re right in the middle of a big technological/business transition as to how our stories will be told. Personally, I think that eReaders are still clunky and not where they need to be, but they’re getting closer.  [Given] the speed at which technology is moving, I think the next device is right around the corner. That’s why I took the chance and went with a digital house. I wanted Night Town to be ready.

Can you talk a little bit about The Sniffer, the audio podcast you and Nora Young started? 

Nora and I started  The Sniffer in the summer of 2005, the summer when the word “podcast” had just appeared on computer screens . . . We do it primarily for fun, and as a way to sniff out sometimes wacky and really interesting new trends in technology. We’re both wool-gathering geeks and most folks don’t get all revved up talking about the stuff we do. But early subscribers heard about trends like Facebook, Second Life and YouTube first. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s something we do for ourselves and for you.