The Kingston WritersFest is finally here! Starting tonight, and continuing through Sunday evening, the city of Kingston will be filled with authors and book lovers. All week long, Open Book will be sharing interviews with festival authors, who will tell us a bit about writing, reading and the one luxury they allow themselves while on tour with a book.
In today's Kingston WritersFest Interview, we speak with Tamai Kobayashi, winner of the 2014 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers, and author of the novel Prairie Ostrich (Goose Lane Editions). Prairie Ostrich is a warm and compelling story about eight-year-old Egg Murakami, who lives with her unhappy family on an Ostrich Farm in 1970's rural Alberta.
Tamai will be joining fellow writers Melanie Dugan and Heather O'Neill on the morning of Sunday, September 28 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. to read from their books and discuss the intricacies of writing from the perspective of children at The Voice of the Child.
For more details, please visit the Events page. You can purchase your tickets here.
Open Book:
Tell us about what you’ll be reading at this year’s festival.
Tamai Kobayashi:
I will be reading from the beginning of my novel, Prairie Ostrich, the story of Egg Murakami, a young Japanese Canadian girl who faces the ghosts in her family and the harsh world of a small Albertan town in the 1970s.
OB:
How do you manage the shift between being a solitary writer and a public reader?
TK:
The word begins when I am alone, at the keyboard. So I pretend. I am just breathing life into the words, just reading to myself.
OB:
What is one luxury you allow yourself when you go "on tour" with a book?
TK:
I promise myself a good meal, or I pick a sight, a sound, something that I can take and make into something else in my head. I am gathering, not just wool, but words to spin into something later.
OB:
What book will you have with you in your bag while you're attending the Kingston WritersFest?
TK:
Prairie Ostrich, of course. I wouldn't want to leave Egg behind.
OB:
What are you most looking forward to about this year's festival?
TK:
I am excited to meet my fellow authors. And Kingston is gorgeous!
Born in Japan, raised in Canada, Tamai Kobayashi is a writer, song-writer and videographer. She is the author of two story collections, Exile and the Heart and Quixotic Erotic, whose vivid, electric prose has garnered considerable critical acclaim. Prairie Ostrich is her first novel.
For more information about Prairie Ostrich please visit the Goose Lane Editions website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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