Next
Meeting
Media Club of
Ottawa
the Media
Club of Ottawa presents monthly
programs of significance
to
professionals in all branches of the
communications
field.
Our
program offers a stimulating variety of speakers.
Alexandra-Pope
- speaker
Qais-Ghanem -
speaker
Amira Eghawaby - speaker
Dani-Elle Dube - award winner
Katelin
Belliveau -
award winner
Bruce-MacGregor - speaker
December, 2020
r
,COVID-19 restrictions
Our
program has been switched to
publication
of articles by our scheduled speakers on their topic
Publication
date:
About Frances Itany
by
June Coxon
Ottawa
author Frances Itani last spoke at a Media Club meeting in 2008 and
would have done so again now if it were possible to hold such meetings.
Instead, like others who would have spoken to the Media Club since
COVID-19 arrived in Canada, she sent the following item for you to
read. First though, here is her brief biography.
Frances Itani is a Member of
the Order of
Canada and an award-winning, best-selling author of 18 books (novels,
stories, poetry and children’s work). She has published
articles,
essays and reviews in the Washington Post, Canadian Geographic,
Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Saturday Night,
Toronto Life, The Canadian Forum, Brick, The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa
Magazine, The Montreal Gazette, The Vancouver Sun, etc.
Frances was born in Belleville
ON, grew up in
a small village on the Ottawa River in Québec, has travelled
widely and has lived in seven Canadian provinces. She also lived in
England, U.S.A., Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Croatia and Cyprus. She
worked as a Cost Accountant (in Hull, QC) and Executive Secretary in
London, England, but her first training was as a Nurse, studying at the
Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and Duke University. She
practiced and taught Nursing for eight years. Following that, she
earned a B.A. in Psychology (U. of Alberta), and an M.A. in English
Literature (UNB).
Her work has been translated in 18 countries and has been widely
anthologized. Among her many awards, she is a three-time winner of the
CBC Literary Award, won a Commonwealth Award for best book (Deafening),
two Ottawa Book Awards, the Kingston Reads Award, MacEwan University
Book of the Year Award, the CAA Jubilee Award for best book of Canadian
stories, etc. Her novel, Deafening, was selected for CBC Canada Reads
(English and French) and was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin
International Literary Award and the William Saroyan International
Literary Award. Another novel, Tell, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank
Giller Prize (2014). She has written a radio play and several features
broadcast by CBC. In 2009 she was awarded a six-week Fellowship by the
Civitella Foundation at a castle in Umbria, Italy, the Civitella
Ranieri Center. In 2012 she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond
Jubilee Medal, and in 2019, the Library and Archives Canada Scholars
Award. Her latest novel is The Company We Keep (2020). Frances lives in
Ottawa.
To read more about her and her
books check her website: francesitani.com
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Frances Itany
speaks to us, virtually, in writing
The
Company We Keep
Greetings everyone:
I am so pleased to be
able to join
you now and later on the website – even though the meeting
is, by
necessity, virtual. Seems a long time since
‘lockdown’
began, but I am ever optimistic and look forward to being out and about
and seeing friends and colleagues up close once more. Next year!
– I write with a sigh. This most unusual year is drawing to a
close and we are probably happy to let it go. I know that my own
response to this global lockdown has resulted in a lack of focus in my
writing. I seem to want to work on many projects at the same time,
always aware of the uncertainty around me.
My new novel The Company We Keep, was published in late August and I am
still doing promotional work, meeting with book clubs, and giving talks
and presentations as a panelist and reader – all virtual.
Canadian literary festivals were by and large cancelled during the
usually busy fall publishing season, but several festivals sponsored
virtual sessions and I was happy to take part.
Although I didn’t
plan this, because the
novel took almost three years to write, its release during the pandemic
turned out to be eerily fitting. I created six characters (a seventh is
a parrot), each of whom is grieving in some way: loss, death of a
spouse, parent or friend, loss of sense of self, loss of country, a
variety of losses. Grief, a universal condition, holds the book
together thematically. Added to that is the human ability to change, to
seek company, to reach out and help others. So although this is a story
about grief, it is also about hope. The novel, set in the fictional
town of Wilna Creek, is not a ‘downer.’ It
won’t make
you weep and want to pull out your hair. The story has plenty of light
moments and is a realistic look at the human condition. The word that
comes back to me from readers is that they hate to give up the
‘company’ of my characters at the end of the book.
They
tell me that the book has been comforting as well as revealing.
Encouraging for a writer to hear!
During the creation of this
book, I stayed
away from clinical aspects and stages of grief, as well as
group-therapy sessions. I wanted my six strangers to meet casually in
the backroom of Cassie’s café and, with no agenda,
introduce themselves and begin to interact. They begin to tell their
stories. (Always, my work is about storytelling.)
First, the reader meets each character separately. By the time the
first meeting takes place in Cassie’s backroom, the reader
knows far
more about them all than the characters know about one another. We
learn the back stories, their various professions and vocations, and
their interactions with others outside the group. And, of course, I
can’t forget Rico, the African grey (plenty of research to
create the
character of the parrot). Rico’s role is to reveal the depth
of Gwen’s
character, but he takes up his own space, too, and I became very fond
of him while writing the book
In total, there are four women and two men in the
group,
ages ranging from 40 to 79. Hazzley, a widow, is 77, born in the UK but
a long-time Canadian resident. She is a working editor and her art is
‘the word.’ Tom is 79. He owns an antiques shop and
is
considering retirement. Tom writes poetry which he never shows to
anyone, but he loves the great poets and has a poetic soul himself.
Addie, at 49, works in administration in a local hospital, loves
classical music, and is caring for her closest friend. Allam, in his
early 60s, is a Syrian refugee and a storyteller. He is improving his
English and becomes a good friend to Tom. Gwen (around age 60), who was
long bullied by her late husband, has a three-month job as a
‘parrot-sitter’ and she pours out her story to Rico
and
reads Arthurian tales aloud to him. Gwen loves literature. Chiyo is a
40-year-old Japanese Canadian fitness instructor who has a very
complicated relationship with her Mom. Her mother was a child in the
WWII camps in B.C. when 22,000 Japanese Canadians were forcibly removed
from their homes after Pearl Harbor, an experience that deeply affected
the generations that followed. Chiyo loves film and dance. Two of my
characters will find love in each other and will form a more permanent
relationship. All in all, I truly enjoyed bringing these fictional
characters together, and I loved working on the book.
.
|
I’m now writing my next novel, which I hope to
complete in
2021, and I have just completed a children’s picture book and
sent it off to my agent.
One last note, because I am frequently asked this question:
“How did you become a writer after starting out your career
as a
nurse?”
Well, for me that was a
completely natural
transition. I have always been interested in the human condition. My
studies at university (after Nursing) led me to Psychology and further
investigation of human behaviour. My nursing background and
early
studies at several universities while I was doing Graduate Nursing led
me to various practical experiences while working as a nurse: Intensive
Care Nursing at the Ottawa Civic Hospital; work at the Montreal
Neurological Institute; teaching at a Chest Hospital in Montreal on rue
Saint-Urbain; Recovery Room Nursing in North Carolina, and general ward
nursing on hospital medical floors.
My transition from nursing to
writing is not a
surprise to me and I constantly draw on my early background for my
work. It’s all about the human condition and reaching out and
trying to understand. When I was at the University of Alberta in the
mid-70s, I met W.O. Mitchell, my first writing teacher. He became my
greatest supporter and dear friend. After working with him, I studied
with Rudy Wiebe for a year, also in Edmonton – Rudy is now a
long-time friend. When I did graduate work in English Literature at UNB
in Fredericton, I studied with the late Fred Cogswell, poet, professor
and publisher. He was my thesis supervisor. So I’ve been
blessed.
Great friends, great supporters.
Books by Frances Itani
1. No Other Lodgings (Poetry 1978)
2. Linger by the Sea (Children’s 1979)
3. Rentee Bay (Poems 1983)
4. A Season of Mourning (Poems 1988)
5. Truth or Lies (Stories 1989)
6. Pack Ice (Stories 1989)
7. Man Without Face (Stories 1994)
8. Leaning, Leaning Over Water (Novel 1998)
9. Deafening (Novel 2003)
10. Poached Egg on Toast (Stories 2004)
11. Remembering the Bones (Novel 2007)
12. Requiem (Novel 2011)
13. Missing (Novella/Adult Literacy 2011)
14. Listen! (Novella/Adult Literacy 2012)
15. Best Friend Trouble (Children’s 2014)
16. Tell (Novel 2014)
17. That’s My Baby (Novel 2017)
18. The Company We Keep (Novel 2020)
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=============================================================================================
Media
Club of Ottawa
Executive
2020-21
President,
June
Coxon
Secretary-Treasurer.
Iris
ten
Holder
ABOUT ABOUT
<
Board
of
Directors:
June
Coxon,
Iris ten
Holder,
Helen
Bednarek Van Eyk
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