Event 37: The Fresh Face of Fiction (Friday, October 19th, 1 p.m.)

The four writers featured at this event were candid and articulate. Jen Sookfong Lee, David Chariandy, Ameen Merchant, and Neil Smith each read a selection from his or her work, and then the group as a whole engaged in discussion. Denise Ryan (the moderator) asked questions that were thought-provoking, and not obvious. 

The authors began by discussing categories and labels; Lee spoke of being categorized as a “Chinese-Canadian author,” and Merchant wondered, “Well, what exactly is a Canadian book?”  The audience seemed to appreciate the event’s conversational format and engaging questions.
Another revealing discussion was brought on when Ryan probed about each writer’s process.  Chariandy mentioned that his critically acclaimed novel Soucouyant began as a short story, and has since undergone 15 drafts’ worth of change. Neil Smith explained, a little embarrassedly, that the short stories from Bang Crunch came quite easily, and that he was rather new to writing.  The main character of Merchant’s The Silent Raga came from a novel he had read many years ago; Merchant wowed the audience by recounting how he had been enraptured by a character that had suddenly disappeared from the story, so decided to write his novel around this character. Jen Sookfong Lee called writing a “messy process.” Writing her novel, The End of East, had been an exhausting process of research and the creation of an entire family’s history. 

Though newly published as fiction writers, these four read like seasoned veterans; most invigorating was their sincerity, and lack of pretension and cynicism.