The 35th Annual IFOA Festival is now underway! In 2006, IFOA introduced its travelling programme, IFOA Ontario, which brings IFOA literary events to numerous cities throughout Ontario, presented by a consortium of organizations across the province known collectively as Lit on Tour.
Author Michael Winter's new book Into the Blizzard (Doubleday Canada), is his first work of non-fiction. Part history, part travelogue, Into the Blizzard tells of Michael's journey to discover the story of the young Newfoundland men who fought and died in France during World War I. Michael will be joining authors Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Alison Pick on November 6th as part of IFOA Thunder Bay in partnership with CBC Radio, Lakehead University, Northern Women’s Bookstore, Thunder Bay Art Gallery and Thunder Bay Public Library.
Today, Michael speaks with Open Book about an IFOA reading faux-pas, dinner parties as practice for readings and hotel bathroom mirrors.
Open Book:
Tell us about what you’ll be reading at this year’s festival.
Michael Winter:
Into the Blizzard is about the Newfoundland Regiment and its involvement in the First World War. The regiment was almost wiped out on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. I retrace the path of this regiment and describe what it must have been like for the solitary soldier to fight in such a catastrophe. There are also scenes with a cat aboard a ship wearing a lifejacket made of champagne corks and a soldier wearing his gas mask to retrieve honey from a beehive. It's that kind of book. Tears and laughs.
OB:
Have you attended IFOA in the past? If so, what is your favourite memory? If not, what are you most looking forward to?
MW:
I recall the loud roar of an aghast audience as I finished my reading and sat down in the large chair set aside on stage for a writer in prison. I was unaware of the symbolism of the empty chair.
OB:
Tell us about a favourite spot or area in Ontario.
MW:
I like Prince Edward County. The lake there reminds me of the sea. I'm not used to farmland, and I like being reminded that the earth likes to grow things. Where I come from, Newfoundland, it's always a struggle to haul even a healthy potato out of the ground.
OB:
How do you manage the shift between being a solitary writer and a public reader? Is there a learning curve?
MW:
Being solitary is fine – and necessary – to write. But to live you need friends. And friends who prod you to speak and be convivial and force you to have dinner parties and recount stories – all this is good practise for the social dance that is required sometimes to succeed as a public performer.
OB:
What is your favourite part about going on tour with a book?
MW:
Not having to cook. Those late nights when you meet another writer for the first time and it's last call and you're almost in love with that writer and he or she is in love with you. I mean the love of comradery, of we're in it together and I know you and you know me and our shirtsleeves are rolled up and our bellies relaxed. We're animals after the hunt. I love the big mirror in the hotel bathroom that magnifies your face.
OB:
What are you reading right now?
MW:
I have, around the house, about four books open. Edgar Poe's Gold Bug. Stephen Smith's Puckstruck. Michael Crummey's Sweetland. I'm reading my son Charis Cotter's The Swallow.
Michael Winter is the author of numerous acclaimed novels, including The Architects are Here, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and The Death of Donna Whalen, which was nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He is also the recipient of the Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award.
For more information about Into the Blizzard please visit the Doubleday Canada website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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