Over the course of the winter 2010 edition of S.W.A.T., we're posting brief interviews with each of our participating Writers-in-Residence. We want to give all of you a chance to get to know the amazing people who work so hard to make the S.W.A.T. program a success!
Today we present the fifth of our twelve writer interviews - with the exceptional Elisabeth de Mariaffi!
Elisabeth’s poetry and fiction appear regularly in Canadian magazines. Her chapbook, Letter on St. Valentine’s Day, was published in 2009 by The Emergency Response Unit; in 2007, she won the Lina Chartrand Award for Poetry from CV2. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph-Humber and she is one-half of the brand-spanking-new Toronto Poetry Vendors, a small press set to sell poetry broadsides from vending machines. Elisabeth is currently fine-tuning a poetry manuscript and working away at a book of short stories. This spring she is slated to produce a poem-film collaboration with the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT). Elisabeth de Mariaffi is the S.W.A.T. Writer-in-Residence for Madonna.
Our Q & A with Elisabeth de Mariaffi… after the jump!
NOW HEAR THIS!: What inspired you to become a writer?
Elisabeth de Mariaffi: I can’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t writing. I think it might be the only thing I can do. I was lucky enough to receive a lot of encouragement from my teachers and family, and that helped.
NHT!: What was your favourite book when you were 15?
EdM: Arrghh. Maybe Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger? Maybe Wife by Bharati Mukherjee? I remember reading that one, I remember picking it off the library shelf and I still remember the end of it. I read Margaret Atwood’s poetry first, I think: You Are Happy or True Stories.
NHT!: What recently published book do you wish you could have read when you were 15?
EdM: Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill, or A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.
NHT!: What book(s) are you reading right now?
EdM: Aimee Bender’s book of short stories, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and a poetry collection by Ed Skoog, Mister Skylight. Also a book of essays about writing by Donald Barthelme called Not-Knowing.
NHT!: What are you writing right now?
EdM: I’m working on a collection of short stories. I just finished a draft of a story that I think will be called Wheel of Flames, but we’ll see.
NHT!: Where is your favourite place to write?
EdM: That sort of depends. I’ll often find that a few lines or a first idea will come to me just wherever: in a coffee shop, on the streetcar, when I’m trying to take a nap. I often do the first bit of writing just anywhere; I really like sitting and staring out a window or watching people. But when it comes to actually sitting down and working at it, I think I concentrate better at my desk at home.
NHT!: Do you do a lot of research when you’re writing fiction or poetry?
EdM: Sometimes. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for something---like my character really likes engines, or dirt bikes, or something that I in fact don’t know much about---and then I do some digging to find out more about that thing, what it might look like. I often look at maps.
NHT!: Do you write with an audience in mind or just for yourself?
EdM: I definitely approach any kind of project with an audience in mind. Although I think it’s good to give yourself some freedom, automatic-writing time or journal-writing time, where you are not working on a project but just writing for the sake of writing: it’s a good way to generate ideas and you might let yourself be a little looser and crazier that way.
NHT!: What was the first thing you published and (if you don’t mind us asking) how old were you?
EdM: I published a poem in the Toronto Board of Education’s annual anthology of students’ work when I was 11. I can’t remember the name of the poem, but it was a response to something we’d read in class, and two of us got a poem into the book which was really exciting when you consider the number of kids in the whole Toronto Board, from grade 1-13....
NHT!: What’s the best advice you received as a young writer?
EdM: Read, read, read. Write, write, write. It was Margaret Atwood’s advice to young writers: I read it somewhere. To this day, if I find I’m not writing as much, it’s probably because I’m not taking enough time to read.
NHT!: What advice do you have for young writers who are trying to get published?
EdM: It might be some variation on the above. Read lots of different kinds of work and try all kinds of experiments. Just try everything. Absolutely submit to any student publications, anthologies, journals: the Toronto Public Library produces a good one, they’ve got a deadline coming up in March,* I think. Write something every day, even if it’s just a really good list.
*Ed. Note: The Toronto Public Library is looking for work to be published in their Young Voices 2010 magazine. The deadline is April 10, 2010 - find out more information here!
Look out for our next writer interview: it will be posted to the NOW HEAR THIS! blog on Tuesday, March 23!
