Line of Inquiry: Sandra Birdsell

Sandra Birdsell was born in Winnipeg, the fifth of eleven children, to a Dutch-Mennonite mother and a French-speaking Métis father.

Among her nine fiction titles are The Two-Headed Calf, The Chrome Suite, The Russländer, and Children of the Day.

Along with several Manitoba and Saskatchewan book awards, Birdsell’s work has been recognized with the WH Smith Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Marian Engel Award, as well as nominations for two Governor General’s Awards and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

In 1996, Birdsell moved from Winnipeg to Saskatchewan, a relocation that is mirrored in her new novel, Waiting for Joe (Random House).
She lives in Regina.

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

When I read from my work it is a chance for me to "hear" it as readers' might be hearing it as they read. I have within me the impulse and emotion of what the characters are thinking, saying and doing and I think that comes out during a reading.

2) What do you want people to know about Waiting for Joe?

Waiting for Joe was 4 years in the making and behind it is a lot of reading about the roots of his boyhood faith.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

Winnipeg is my second home. I lived there for decades, and Westminster Avenue, the elms, still has a strong pull.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I'm in a book club and reading for that right now. I've begun writing what I think could be a short story.

5) The majority of the action in The Russlander took place in 1910. The Children of the Day is set in 1953. After spending so much time fictionally in other eras, what is it like writing something so contemporary?

Writing something so contemporary is really not much different than writing Historical fiction. People are moved and changed by the same things regardless of the time period.

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Sandra Birdsell will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 22 - Mainstage, with Sharon McCartney, Uma Parameswaran, Craig Francis Power, Michael Wex.
September 23 - Nooner.
September 23 - Rural Tour, Portage la Prairie.

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Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.