Writer’s Block: Irena Karafilly

All Lit Up: Tell us about Tunes for Dancing Bears. What can readers expect?

Irena Karafilly: Tunes for Dancing Bears is a short novel that intimately explores a birth tragedy while also dealing more generally with the challenges of being a woman. The plot takes place in Montreal but offers a universal story closely examining the dynamics of a troubled marriage and the hardships faced by a Greek immigrant family.

Lydia Dimou is the daughter of poor Greek immigrants. Her husband John Gabriel, a successful surgeon, comes from a more prosperous background and, after his wife gets pregnant, becomes involved with another woman. The chapters set on St. Margaret’s maternity ward alternate with flashbacks to life on a Greek island as well as John Gabriel’s trysts with the fascinating Claire Remington. It is a sad story but one dealing with a surprisingly neglected subject. Unlikely as it sounds, it actually ends on a rather hopeful note.

All Lit Up: What inspired the idea for your latest book?

Irena Karafilly: I was a neophyte mother when I chanced to see a dishevelled-looking woman sobbing on a Montreal hospital’s maternity ward. She was waiting for the elevator, leaning against her husband as though her legs could not be trusted to carry the weight of her own body. I, too, was about to be discharged, delirious with the joy of having given birth in my 30s to a perfectly healthy baby. I did not yet know that the weeping woman had given birth to a stillborn child, but a chatty nursing student speaking in hushed tones soon satisfied my curiosity. The bereaved woman’s face haunted me––until I finally surrendered and sat down to write about her plight.

All Lit Up: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Irena Karafilly: According to the WHO, there are nearly two million stillbirths every year – one every 16 seconds; in Canada, one in every 125 pregnancies ends in a stillbirth. Despite these startling statistics, despite the fact that stillbirths are ten times more common than SIDS, the subject is rarely discussed, in private or in public. Most women who have experienced a birth tragedy are pained by others’ inability to understand their suffering and the difficulty of getting over their loss. If I have succeeded in what I set out to do, my readers will finally understand that a stillbirth is often a life-altering event. 

All Lit Up: If you weren’t an author, what do you think you’d be doing?

Irena Karafilly: Ever since I was a child, I longed to know what it would be like to inhabit other people’s skin. I was too shy to contemplate becoming an actress, but it’s the only other profession that would have satisfied my need to imagine having more than one life, more than just one destiny.

All Lit Up: How do you approach developing your characters or world-building?

Irena Karafilly: More often than not, I don’t know much about them when I start writing. Even in Arrested Song, which was inspired by a deceased Greek woman, my protagonist kept surprising me. I ended up with a character who had a few things in common with the original but who insisted on being her own woman, a feminist before her time. I get to know my characters very slowly. Eventually I know them so well that awakened in the middle of the night, I might be able to recall the name of my heroine’s grandfather, or the colour of her favourite underwear.

All Lit Up: If you could spend a day with one of your characters, who would it be and why?

Irena Karafilly: I would like to spend more than a day with one or two of the men I’ve created. Sometimes I think I created them because I was not lucky enough to meet them in real life.  For example, I love Dr. Dhaniel in Arrested Song for his idealism, intelligence, humour.  In describing him, I imagined he looked like Boris Pasternak, the Russian author––or at least his photo on the cover of Dr. Zhivago. He does, of course, have his flaws, but I am sure I would love him anyway!

All Lit Up: What was your most rewarding moment as a writer?

Irena Karafilly: Years ago, when my daughter was about 11, she reminded me that I’d been promising to take her to Disneyland someday. I was a single mother, a writer with a part-time university teaching job, so I kept putting it off. Finally, just before the holidays, I decided it was then or never. I asked a friend who worked at a travel agency whether I could pay her in January, when I was contracted to teach twice my usual load. She agreed and I hastened to make arrangements. This was totally out of character for me (I hate debts!), but three days after I’d committed myself, the phone rang and there was CBC’s Bob Weaver, calling from Toronto to say that my story (Hoodlums) had just won first prize at the CBC Literary Awards! A Christmas miracle that made me realize I’d been doing it all wrong. Spending money one doesn’t have is apparently the way to get more!

All Lit Up: What advice would you give to a young aspiring writer?

Irena Karafilly: Don’t do it unless you absolutely can’t help it! Unless your devotion to your story equals what you feel for the mother who gave you life, the dog who saved you from the jaws of a grizzly, and yes, the children you would gladly die for. Because, let’s face it: Dying for your children is surely easier than abandoning a thrilling chapter just because daycare workers happen to be on strike or a blizzard has shut down your children’s school. This is why authors habitually dedicate their books to their long-suffering spouses or children. It is an olive branch sprouting from a heart as contrite as it is incorrigible.

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Irena Karafilly is an award-winning author of several acclaimed books and of numerous stories, poems, and articles. She has published in literary and mainstream magazines, as well as in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Her short stories have won Canada’s National Magazine Award and the CBC Literary Award. Her latest novel, Arrested Song, was recently published in the UK by Legend Press and was Finalist for the QWF 2024 Paragraphe-Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. She divides her time between Montreal and Athens.