Homegrown 2.0: Even More Locally Produced Reads (October 24)

Find more Homegrown picks here.

Blessed Nowhere by Catherine Black (Guernica Editions)

Oakville, ON

All Lit Up: Do you have a favourite spot to visit in your hometown/where you live? Tell us about it.

Catherine Black: I’m in love with the trail system in Oakville—I walk every day. The trails are where I work out knots in my plots, there’re where I obsess and dream and sort out what I’m thinking. I can’t overstate the impact being able to walk in nature has had on my mental health and overall creative process, my writing. I’m deeply indebted, specifically, to the Nipegon Trail with its little creek and tall oaks, its remnants of an apple orchard. That trail restores and reinvigorates me time and again.

Click here to learn more about Blessed Nowhere + purchasing options.

Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea by Liz Worth (Book*hug Press)

Hamilton, ON

All Lit Up: Is there any literary lore in your hometown/where you live?

Liz Worth: One of my favourite authors, Daniel Jones, grew up in Hamilton. His work, especially his punk rock novel 1978, has greatly influenced the path I’ve taken as a writer. Locally, Daniel was friends with Chris Houston of legendary punk band the Forgotten Rebels. Previous to Daniel’s move to Toronto, he and Chris had a band here called Middle Class Noise. As I walk the streets of Hamilton I can imagine that Daniel Jones might have turned the same corners or crossed the same intersections, humming new tunes or dreaming up new lines of poetry in the process.

Click here to learn more about Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea + purchasing options.

As We Forgive Others by Shane Peacock (Cormorant Books)

Cobourg, ON

All Lit Up: Does your community feature in your book in some way? How?

Shane Peacock: Though Cobourg does not feature directly in the novel, this book is set in a fictional Canadian town very much like it, featuring streets, a cafe and a police station that will be recognizable to my fellow Cobourg residents. I set it in a place like this because I wanted to replicate an authentic Canadian town, in order to explore the Canadian personality, and show that there is much more to us than our ostensibly polite surface, more complexity and mystery, and sometimes, some darkness..

Click here to learn more about As We Forgive Others + purchasing options.

Happy Anniversary by Vanessa Cardoso Whelan
(Playwrights Canada Press)

Conception Bay South, NL

All Lit Up: Do you have a favourite spot to visit in your hometown/where you live? Tell us about it. 

Vanessa Cardoso Whelan: My favourite place to be is in nature. I love being  outdoors hiking, meditating, recharging my energy and getting inspired. I’m privileged to live in Newfoundland & Labrador, so the landscape always take my breath away…never gets old.

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(1979-    ): Mortifications by Nathan Dueck
(Turnstone Press)

Cranbrook, BC

All Lit Up: Is there any literary lore in your hometown/where you live? (e.g. a famous author of yore was born there, a legendary bookstore is there, etc).

Nathan Dueck: Frederick Philip Grove depicts the land on which my hometown was built as flat. Simple as that. It’s just flat.

If you’d ask me, this is how I’d put it: The panorama is split at the eyeline between tallgrass brush below and feathery cirrus above. I’m biased, though. A true booster.

Thing is, I’d never even heard of Grove (1871-1948), never mind learned that he once lived in Winkler, Manitoba, until after I left home to study. I have a professor to thank for teaching me that a man who wrote stacks of books and won a pile of awards once taught grade school where I was raised. Although FTP lived in Winker for two years, between 1913-1915, it was long enough to publish a couple articles and even marry a local woman, Catherine Wiens. That was all she wrote until historians discovered that “Felix Paul Greve” moved to North America after staging his death to avoid paying off debt (having already being convicted of fraud and spending a year in jail). Oh, and according to local lore he was more-or-less chased out of town for encouraging the youth to question their Mennonite faith. So, yeah, the first man of letters from my home was a tried-and-true con man.

Now, I’m not even worthy of blowing the dust of Greve/Grove’s book jackets, but here we are. My most recent book’s a grave telling of my many embarrassments. Were I smart enough to take a page from FPG’s book, I’d just make up a backstory whole cloth, but I just don’t have the constitution necessary to live a lie. Like, I may not tell nothing but the truth in (1979-    ): Mortifications, but I promise I’m a member in good standing at the credit union.

Click here to learn more about (1979-    ): Mortifications + purchasing options.

Hard Electric by Michael Blouin (Anvil Press)

North Grenville, ON

All Lit Up: Does your community feature in your book in some way? How?

Michael Blouin: Each of my books has, in some way, featured my community of North Grenville, Ontario. These influences can be as varied as detailed setting descriptions of setting in my novels Skin House or Chase and Haven, or by serving as the last refuge of a notorious frontier gunslinger in “I am Billy the Kid”. My new poetry collection Hard Electric spans almost twenty years of poetry assembled into a loose narrative which incorporates geographic references to my home territory as specific as 45°01’21.2″N 75°38’33.9″W and as generalized as references to the emotions involved in being part of a place rather than merely existing in it. I enjoy walking my dog through streets and forests which appear in my books, being able to apply the smells and textures of place to my writing, and although I have and am writing about locations as diverse as Death Valley and Paris, they are always places I have been and in which I have experienced what I would describe as “life moments.” The truth is that no matter what place I am writing about I am always writing about home. Here is a poem from the new collection that I feel many people could relate to in terms of its setting, but the truth of it is that it is specific almost down to exact snowflakes. But then the concept of home, coming to it or leaving it, is common to us all.

there is some small comfort to be found in rituals

now we’re home
and right now I am shoveling this snow
that no one saw coming
yesterday I was making stew
when I was a child the things
that moved in the night were different

but you can’t go back
there
the streets here are a mess
cold rutted
we sit with coffee and these donuts
it’s funny how you never have to think about cancer
until you do

Some of the themes that seem to run through my published work have been pointed out to me by readers and this always comes as a shock to me. This question has forced me to reexamine the things I write in light of community, and I have come to realize that much of my writing ends up being about coming home, which, upon reflection, can be both a difficult and a pleasant thing to do. Where else can we turn to that must accept us as we are?

Click here to learn more about Hard Electric + purchasing options.