Marion Agnew

  People have said nice things about my debut novel ahead of its official launch on October 15. It's humbling and I'm so grateful to everyone who's had a hand in helping this story reach readers.   It's available for preorder wherever books are sold, both brick-and-mortar locations and online.  Here's a suggestion: Perhaps ask your local independent bookstore to order it--and if you don't have a local independent bookstore, check out Bookshop.org, where your online purchases support independent bookstores. They even have an agreement with All Lit Up, a consortium of Canadian Independent Publishers !  And yes! It's also available to order from the large chain bookstores in both the US and Canada.  PRAISE FOR MAKING UP THE GODS Full of humour and heart, Marion Agnew’s debut novel is both a love letter to northern Ontario, and a moving meditation on grief, community, and family—the one we are born with, and the one we choose. No matter where you are in the wo...

Hi there--things behind the scenes of my wee website overhaul are edging ever-more closely to completion. But things behind the scenes are more complicated, and go more slowly, than one might imagine. Gray Fox on the deck. She hasn't been around much in the past couple of weeks. You'd think I'd have learned all this from watching those home renovation shows through the years. I guess it's different when it's your edifice (virtual or architectural) that they're renovating. It actually doesn't come together in a half-hour. We've had a tepid and muggy summer, when it's not cool and rainy. I've been solving problems right and left (refrigerators, most recently), and not getting outdoors near often enough. However.  On the up side, all the not-writing activities have allowed a seed to germinate. Perhaps. I'm fertilizing it and watching it, and meanwhile, working with it gives me ten or fifteen solid lovely minutes of creativity every day. It's...

My first book, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER'S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER'S , collected personal essays about my mother's dementia and how our family responded to it. Click here to download AlzAuthors's special guide to its resources about caring for mothers. Dementia (in all its forms, including Alzheimer's) can be a lonely illness. The person who has it can find socializing difficult. Their family members are likely not specialists in dementia and may need help figuring out basic skills for caring for adults.  Sometimes, people in the dementia community just need companionship. Not professional intervention, necessarily--just proof that others have experienced or are currently experiencing what you're going through. Feeling seen and heard somehow makes it easier to return to life with a fresh perspective and new energy. And often, you gain a few insights or learn a few techniques that can help everyone. Organizations like AlzAuthors help new caregivers find compani...

Here are my thoughts about some of the books I've read recently. Not homework at all! My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout     “I had not yet learned the depth of disgust city people feel for the truly provincial.”   I read this book a few months back but held off writing about it, hoping I’d eventually know what to say, but I still don’t quite know how I feel.   I don’t mind books in which “not much happens,” which is a criticism I’ve seen of this book. Here’s what “happens”: Lucy Barton lies in a hospital bed. Her mother comes to visit. They talk and remember. The end.   But that summary is, of course, not everything. Lucy and her mother talk about and around and behind their own relationship. Lucy wonders about the world she left behind and second-guesses her choices. She’s attentive to those who are attentive to her. She’s not sure what’s happening at times. It’s a quiet book about people.   Did I like it? It was fine. Would I reread it? I can’t qui...

So I’ve been thinking about looking deeply into things. Pulling back the curtain. Showing what happens behind the scenes. Incident 1: When I was at the dentist early this summer, he poked and drilled while I sat benumbed and reclined. Then he brought me upright in the chair and handed me a mirror. He was excited to show me the series of cracks in my back molars (and several other teeth), the stains everywhere, and the big hole he’d created and was about to fill. Yay! Because I’m a compliant person, most of the time, I looked in the mirror he was holding, but I really didn’t care. I know I didn’t muster enough enthusiasm to please him, but then again, a. No one could (he was pretty enthusiastic), b. I’ve been disappointing dentists and dental hygienists longer than he’s been alive so I’m used to it, and c. Basically, making a dentist happy is not my emotional labour to perform. Consider the hydrangea, if that's what this is: it neither toils nor spins. It knows for whom it performs ...

I seem to enjoy using the words "reflection" and "retrospective." Hmm.  It’s apparently customary for people who write and read to reflect on their writing and reading at the end of the year. Even if, like me, you consider reading your vocation as well as work, yet somehow don’t have “reading goals.”* My to-be-read pile:  nothing but good times ahead I do track what I read (because it involves writing in a notebook, as much as for any other reason, and what is not to love about writing in a notebook?) and I (separately) record thoughts as I read. I am also, on occasion, moved to share thoughts publicly, sometimes in formal reviews and sometimes on Instagram and/or Twitter in a #SundaySentence post.   However, I don’t have goals like “read XXX books this year” or “revisit Author Name’s work” or “read a lot of books about maps,” although I have, in various recent years, done both of those last two.   This past year, as in the year previous, I consciously bro...

Menopause, with its accompanying insomnia, has become my friend over time. Often, up in the night, I watch or re-watch old favourite DVDs (yes, I’m ancient), especially those my husband shares no enthusiasm for.   However, even I get tired of gorgeous scenery and classic costume dramas, and as a consequence, I’ve resorted to listening to the movie with commentaries—director, producer, writer, or some combination of those.   It’s FASCINATING. I learn so much. Often, I learn that I watched a whole different movie. Especially when the movie adapts a classic. Yes, I've seen autumn here before. But I haven't seen THIS autumn. Yet.   I used to be a Jane Austen purist. I believed the BBC 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation was JUST BETTER than any other. I had LOTS of opinions that ranked adaptations on a scale I didn’t bother to specify, but which was mostly “faithfulness to the original book” plus some sense of seriousness and who knows what else. I had no time f...

Not to be all "gratitude list" about it, because nothing is more annoying when you're wound up and in a funk at the same time to be told, "make a gratitude list," but. Okay, this is maybe a little gratitude-y.  September has brought, shall we say, challenges, and in learning to meet them, I have been deliberately looking for bright sides.  * The "active words on a page" part of writing my new novel had to take a back seat in September. In the rest of life, we had problems. They needed solutions. We also had situations--things that existed but over which we had no control and thus couldn't solve. Sorting it all out meant fractured sleep and focus and concentration. That meant few words.  Bright side: the novel was still there. Occasionally I'd stop at my open notebook and write down something, and when I went back to look recently, all of the notes made sense. (!!!) Apparently I was continuing to work on my novel all that time. I'm sitting d...

Note, by "planners" I am not discussing printed/written systems for tracking your days, although I certainly could because I love me some notebooks and systems and checkboxes, oh my.  Nope. I'm talking about thinking ahead with confidence. Enough confidence to imagine doing something in the future.  That's pretty small. But it's significant. As small things often are.  Last year at this time, I was planning to participate in an event that eventually got cancelled. We get a mulligan (*sports term: "do-over" for us non-athletes) this year.  The event: The Creative Nonfiction Collective's annual conference , mid-May. (You can look at a schedule at the link.) This year, it'll be online. Previous years' experiences have been well worth the conference fees, and that was back when I had to pay for travel and share a washroom with strangers.  I'll be presenting about mentorship with Susan Olding , whose guidance is largely responsible for the exi...

Sometimes it feels as if growing older requires consistently lowering expectations of others. Or maybe it just feels that way today. Today, some people are determined to live down to the few expectations I had left for them--I'm looking at you, election officials in Oklahoma, to say nothing of half of the voters who live there.  But. I have a choice. Today, I choose to celebrate people who are doing their best in impossible circumstances.  Random slightly fuzzy photo of a beautiful flower/weed  from the most beautiful place on the planet. Today, I'm celebrating public health officials who are saying hard things in rooms of politicians, and who continue to say these hard things, day after day after day. These people are giving good, science- and experience-based advice.  Their advice is too often ignored and wished away, lalala if I pretend to be responsible, if I raise my voice and tell people to get it together, maybe something good will happen, lalala. I can't imag...

In this Year of the Weird, I'm coming to understand that pre-ordering can be a significant act of literary citizenship.  Side note:  Here's a link to others' thoughts about the definition and meaning of the term "literary citizenship ." To me, being a good literary citizen is to contribute, in a positive way, to a community to which I also belong--in this case, the community that writes and reads books. And attempting to contribute as much as I benefit. An effort which, I gotta say, in this community, is difficult. Because books! I like books, and I read a lot of books. I have thoughts about them, and sometimes I write about books and those thoughts here. I rarely, if ever, review books--review meaning either "five stars" recommendations or engaged, contextualized criticism worthy of the academy.  Part of the reason I'm circumspect is that I often like books that others don't, for reasons others don't. I also don't like books that others ...

Last December--what feels like roughly eleventy-billion years ago now-- I wrote about two books in connection with my father's birthday. One of those books was The Cooking Gene, by Michael W. Twitty. This past couple of weeks, we as a society have looked (again) (and, I hope, in a sustained way) at murders of black men and women and focused a renewed, deserved attention on Black Lives Matter.  As I've considered the ways in which I've benefited from being White, I keep thinking about this book. In the post six months ago, I shared how this book changed my perspective on the value of DNA tests as a way to trace family history. (Again, not the use of any DNA aggregation as "proof" that "I can't be racist because genes" or "I'm indigenous because genes." Again, check out the work of Dr. Kim TallBear .)   Here's another subject Twitty discusses: slavery was an industry, in the modern sense of industry. When White people enslaved African...

Many people more knowledgeable and connected than I am are posting many resources to educate White people about Black history in North America.  Pay attention to those--but look at this organization, too. Here's a link to The Fold , an organization that does so much for voices traditionally underrepresented in the literary world.  They hold a Festival of Literary Diversity each spring, and this year, they held it online. It was exciting to be able to "go" (from our upstairs guest room) and hear great writers talking about process, community, revising, and many other struggles of art and craft. They also host a reading challenge each year . And they hold (ACCESSIBLE!) webinars and other activities all year, including an event for young readers . They recommend books all over their site. They also accept donations. Give .  The next resources are not specifically Black-owned or -led but they support diverse Canadian literature. If you're looking to expand your reading ho...

Good morning! Look at this:  Pretty, huh. Yesterday, I participated (online) in a workshop from the North American Association for Environmental Education , entitled "Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry." I got to spend an hour with Aimee Nezhukamatathil, author of World of Wonders , to be published by Milkweed (one of my favourite publishers) in August. Here's more: Interesting, though possibly less "traditionally pretty." The workshop, though: it was wonderful! Especially because I'm generally intimidated by poetry, both reading it and writing it. And I have an appreciation of others' scientific expertise, which I emphatically do NOT have. And yesterday, I was reminded that all writing starts somewhere, and a sense of wonder--both in the sense of "awe" and in the sense of "curiosity"--is a great starting point. Also: the power of starting small. Of keeping journals wher...

In a week, I'll be part of a panel, sponsored by the Lakehead University Centre for Health Care Ethics, that considers the ethics of storytelling in health care settings. It will also be webcast! Here's a link to all that info. The featured speaker is Dr. Cynthia Wesley -Esquimaux , Lakehead's Chair on Truth and Reconciliation. I'm sure her insights as a researcher, and an indigenous researcher, will generate a lot of discussion. After she speaks, those of us on the panel ( Dr. Elaine Wiersma ,  Dr. Vicki Kristman , and I) will respond, discuss, and take off on tangents (oh wait, that's me), with Kristen Jones-Bonofiglio, Director of the Centre for Health Care Ethics, moderating. One might wonder what I'm doing up there, with distinguished and experienced researchers and storytellers. First, I'm there to represent those non-experts who write about tender and touchy subjects that relate to health care. Choosing to navigate, on the page, my mother...