Interview with

Shawna Lemay
Canadian Women Reading and Writing
February 5, 2009

Shawna Lemay is the author of five books of poetry: All the
God-Sized Fruit (1999), Against Paradise (2001), Still (2003),
Blue Feast (2005), and Red Velvet Forest (2009). Her first book
of essays is titled Calm Things (2008). She has a BA in Honours English and an MA in English, both from the University of
Alberta. All the God-Sized Fruit won both the Gerald Lampert
Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. She
has two blogs: Capacious Hold-All and Calm Things. She lives
in Edmonton, Alberta with her partner, Robert Lemay, a visual
artist, their daughter Chloe and their well-walked black labrador
retriever, Ace.

CanWWR (Patricia): Literature can hurt. (Laughter)
S.L.: Yes, that this horse could die—and I kept thinking, “There
has to be more. Where is the rest of the story? Where is horse
miraculously brought back to life?”
CanWWR (Patricia): Alas. Were there any restrictions placed on
your reading as a child or did you have kind of carte blanche to
read whatever you wanted?
S.L.: My parents have grade eight/nine education and they said,
“Here’s your library card. Go to the library.” The librarian didn’t
put any restrictions. So I just had the whole library…

CanWWR had the opportunity to interview Shawna Lemay
(S.L.) on June 5, 2009 at the University of Alberta.

CanWWR (Patricia): So the library was really your classroom. I
mean that’s where you really learned, in the library.

CanWWR (Patricia): Welcome Shawna. And thanks for being
part of this interview. As you know, we’re talking and discussing, together, the connection between women’s reading and
writing, and we have a series of questions for you today. I’m
going to begin with a question about your reading in childhood.
Were you a reader? Are there specific books that you remember?

S.L.: Yes, the public library was the place. I remember walking
down to the public library all summer long, every two days, to
take out the maximum amount of reading material, hoisting it on
my red wagon (laughter) and just making my way home.

S.L.: I was a huge reader, actually, but I was also a huge horse
lover. I would say probably half of what I read as a child had
to do with horses. So, The Red Pony, The Black Stallion series,
a lot of probably obscure little pony stories that you probably
couldn’t find anymore.

CanWWR (Patricia): In addition to the horse stories, are there
particular memories of childhood reading that are still very, very
vivid for you?
S.L.: Yes, it’s very intense. I remember summers, making tents
and lying outside in the shade, in a shady spot to read my book.

CanWWR (Patricia): What was the appeal?

CanWWR (Patricia): Especially if you’re blond. (Laughter)

S.L.: I had horses, so that was part of the appeal. You’re able to
live through these characters, and you go out into the field and
experience it with your own ponies and horses. The Red Pony,
though, I was thinking a lot about that last night because my
horse died when I was a teenager and The Red Pony was the
first book I read that I realized there could be sadness in a book,
that there could be a tragedy.

S.L.: Yes, a very shady spot. Summer equals reading in my
memory of my childhood.
CanWWR (Patricia): Wonderful.
CanWWR (Devorah): Was there a moment when that reading
switched to a desire to write? Did you just always write? Was
there someone who encouraged you to do it, or any moment that
made you feel like you had to write?

CanWWR (Patricia): Kind of a turning point then.
S.L.: It was a huge turning point. I remember not reading for
quite awhile after that, thinking that I felt very betrayed.

S.L.: I think I always wrote. But I think I was a very shy person.
1

I think I hardly existed for people. I was off to the side so they
let me do my thing. So I did write a lot, but probably no one
ever thought to encourage me to write. I think it wasn’t until
high school— and running into a couple of really great language
arts teachers— that writing seemed to be a possibility that way.
But I never imagined that I wouldn’t write. I don’t know if I
thought of it in terms of becoming a writer. I didn’t have that
background or language or the people around me that would
have couched it in those terms. But, I knew I would always
write something. I never, never thought it would be possible to
be a published author, although I’m sure I never knew what that
meant either.

CanWWR (Patricia): Can I just interrupt for a second? The
first class that you took with Bert, was it a literature class or a
creative writing class?
S.L.: The first class I took with him was called English 100 at
the time.
CanWWR (Patricia): Oh, really, so it would be an intro to literature, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf?
S.L.: Exactly. That was a life changing moment for me.
CanWWR (Devorah): We don’t do Beowulf to Virginia Woolf
anymore.

CanWWR (Devorah): So when did that shift happen?
S.L.: I think in high school, because I had a couple of really brilliant teachers who did encourage us to write. They brought extra
Shakespeare into class for us to read, for those of us who wanted
to. Yes, that was very lucky. You don’t realize how lucky you
are to hook up with the right teacher at the right time.

S.L.: Oh no, that’s sad.
CanWWR (Patricia): Many things have been lost.
S.L.: Yes, that was the life changing moment, that one, single
class. And then Bert said, “Why don’t you try Honours English,” which knocked me off my chair. And so even that mentorship began from that moment. Again, very lucky.

CanWWR (Devorah): Do you have a writing community? Or
are you more isolated? Has writing in isolation or being part of a
community been part of your experience of becoming a writer?

CanWWR (Lindsay): Now maybe we’ll move on to your writing process. What would be a typical writing day, if you have
one? I’d really like to know to what degree is it collaborative
between you and your husband [Robert Lemay] and his artwork,
and to what degree is it independent?

S.L.: Well, my writing community happened here at the university, so that’s why whenever I come onto campus, I get a tingly
feeling, I think. But when I took my first English class, it was
Bert Almon who was my professor, and then I ended up taking
poetry through him. My writing community is actually still
some of those people I met in that first class. And it’s expanded
from there. I would say the university has been really the crux of
my development as a writer. As obvious as that sounds.

S.L.: Well my writing day seems to always be changing. I’ve
always staked out a little bit of territory one day a week. The
thesis experience was wonderful because it meant I had all this
time to myself, to concentrate on just this one project. So that’s
an amazing experience right there. But these days, I’m working
part-time again. It’s always, all of my writer friends, especially
the women, we’re always trying to juggle work— what’s the
right job— could we possibly get a grant once in a while?
You’re constantly juggling your kids, the job, the dog, in my
case now, and family life, with writing. And right now I’m actually just having a heck of a time balancing all that out. There
was no grant, so therefore I have a job. Because my partner is an
artist, he understands that if he doesn’t give me that one day a
week, I’ll go insane and he doesn’t want that. (Laughter) It’s not
pretty. So luckily we do have that understanding. I try to turn off
the e-mails, turn off the Facebook, and just get all those voices
out of my head. That takes about an hour, and then I’ll sit down
with my friends, also known as my books, for another hour, and
then I’ll sit down and write at the computer. I’m writing a prose
piece right now, so I’m more on the computer. Whereas with
poetry, I’m always sitting with a paper and pen. I miss that actually. I really miss writing on paper.

CanWWR (Devorah): I think you’re the first person that we’ve
interviewed to mention it that way actually.
S.L.: When I came to university—university had never happened in my family before. I was the first person to go and get a
degree, so it was a foreign country for sure. So everything that
I learned here is what I’ve taken into my writing. I mean, even
this most recent book, [Red Velvet Forest], started with thinking
about what my MA thesis would be.
CanWWR (Devorah): As the first person to go to university, did
your family take your wanting to be a writer seriously, or did
they think it was a nice idea, but not really a serious one?
S.L.: I think the first couple years that I was here they just
thought I was fooling around, and just wasting time. But as the
years passed I did okay, I didn’t flunk out or anything. So they
thought, “Oh, okay, maybe she’s a little bit smarter than we
thought.” So then, yes, they started to think that it was a very
lovely thing.

CanWWR (Patricia): Why do you think you can write prose
directly onto the keyboard, and poetry longhand? Is it a different
2

process?

tion do you have to give? In some instances, I do directly quote,
and I also give the source. In other cases, it’s blended into the
mix. So, there will be a phrase by Virginia Woolf, that someone
who knows Virginia Woolf will probably pick up right away.
But maybe the average reader will just think, “Wow, Shawna
Lemay’s brilliant.” (Laughter) So, in the end, I think I have to
come to terms with how to notate who I’ve stolen from, borrowed from. And I guess what’s the difference between stealing
and borrowing and referencing and paying homage to?

S.L.: I think it is for me. I have started off writing on paper;
I guess I shouldn’t say I don’t ever. But I’m at the 200-page
mark, and it’s so big and unwieldy, that I can’t actually go back
and forth, obviously. So it is easier right now to work on the
computer.
CanWWR (Patricia): It is. I understand that.
S.L.: But I do have a feeling for paper and ink, which is maybe
why I’m working at a stationary shop right now. (Laughter)

CanWWR (Patricia): Well precisely, don’t we do that all the
time?
CanWWR (Devorah): And at the end it doesn’t look exactly the
same.

CanWWR (Patricia): Which one?
S.L.: Notable’s. So I’m learning about pens. I wrote an essay
for someone during my Master’s thesis, Ted Bishop, about the
alchemy of the book, which I think eventually I will end up
turning into a book as well. So there’s endless fodder that I got
out of my Master’s thesis. I probably will be able to write four
books out of the research and thinking that I did in that period.
So, none of it was wasted at all.

S.L.: No, I think it can’t. It’s always going to be coming
through, filtered through, your sensibilities.
CanWWR (Devorah): Yes.
CanWWR (Amy) My question is about your current reading,
which we’ve been talking about somewhat already. But we’re
interested in what you read now? Do you still read the pony
stories?

CanWWR (Patricia): Something about women educating
women too, I’m sure.

S.L.: No, I do not read the pony stories. (Laughter) But I
do wonder how it’s all interrelated. I’ve been recently reading [Gaston] Bachelard. It is so strange that I didn’t come to
Bachelard until a couple years ago because he writes about the
reverie of childhood. A lot of the things that he says speak directly to Red Velvet Forest and the themes that I worked through
there, about the dream world of the child coming to bear on the
dream world and the solitude of an adult. It’s almost like he was
reading my mind or I was reading his mind, at certain points.
So that’s a recent find. But books that I keep coming back to are
The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector. That’s my touchstone
book. I thought I might have abandoned it at some point, but it
seems to become more important to me instead of less important. So that’s a really good one. Kristjana Gunnars’s The Rose
Garden is a really crucial book for me. The way that she talked
about the book being like a consumer item. As soon as I read
that I thought, “That makes sense.” My whole world of reading
all of a sudden made sense. Because as a kid, even, the idea of
re-reading a book wasn’t there for me. It seemed to me that you
weren’t smart enough if you had to read the book twice, right?
That was a feeling I think I had as a kid.

S.L.: Indeed. (Laughter) Well actually very much so. But that’s a
whole other topic.
CanWWR (Amy): I find that really interesting. I’m not sure anybody else has said so directly, “I sit down with my books and I
read and then I immediately write and that’s really important.”
CanWWR (Patricia): They’re kind of meditative prelude, are
they, to writing?
S.L.: Oh exactly. That’s precisely the way I describe it.
CanWWR (Amy): So you read things that you like and you
want to, not imitate necessarily but—internalise
S.L.: Right, I’m trying to internalise certain cadences and phrasing. I’m writing about art forgery right now, and so I am actually
trying to incorporate people’s cadences and voices and sometimes phrases into what I’m writing, so it’s even more important
to immerse. And just get that rhythm internally, so that you can,
in this case, replicate it, because that’s part of the pastiche business that I’m working with.

CanWWR (Patricia): It was due at the library, so you had to take
the book back.

CanWWR (Patricia): And how do you draw the distinction then
between borrowing and replicating a cadence? How do you
draw the line?

S.L.: That’s true too. That’s true too. So it seemed wrong to
me somehow as a child to re-read a book. But when I read this
bit in Kristjana’s Rose Garden about the way we are taught to
read, even by the publicists of publishing companies. And I’ve
worked in bookstores, so there’s that consumer model of reading— just go onto the next book. But to sit and read one book

S.L.: I think that’s what the whole project is actually about.
That’s the question. Where do you draw the line? When do you
become a forger? How far can you push it? How much recogni3

for years, or every year to read the same book a couple of times,
that was pretty radical thought for me. I guess a lot of people,
maybe they just know that. For me it was this really critical
moment where I realized, “Yes you can read a book backwards,
you can read it forwards, you can start in the middle.” And that’s
what I do, when I’ve read it all through, I can dip into this book
at any point, and be completely immersed and happy.

other. It’s meant the world to me. And I know, given the conversations I’ve had online, that it’s made a huge difference for
other women writers. Those who are sometimes more isolated
geographically than I am. Not that Edmonton’s the centre of the
universe. But a friend of mine lives in Creighton, Saskatchewan.
So it’s a community that you can build up.
CanWWR (Amy): There are more places in Canada that are
isolated than not, I suppose. So just to know, in other words,
that there are so many other Canadian writers out there, who are
writing good things.

CanWWR (Patricia): Can I just return to the Clarice Lispector
book for a moment? Why do you think it’s such an important
book for you? Is it the style? Is it the way of entering a consciousness and flowing with that consciousness? Is that what
really appeals to you?

S.L.: Great things!

S.L.: It’s that and I think that she does things in that book that I
didn’t think books could do. So I think it opens up in me a possibility of what can be written. It doesn’t have to have a standard
plot. And that frame of mind that she’s in where she’s flowing
from one thought to the next. It’s poetic but it’s also just the
thoughts that she has. She can just throw a bit about a turtle in
the middle out of nowhere. Or go on for five pages about flowers. So that, to me, is really important, especially with the work
that I’m writing now.

CanWWR (Amy): There are a lot of you.

CanWWR (Amy): It sounds like you don’t really abide by
generic restrictions or anything like that. You read pretty widely
across genres— fiction and non-fiction and poetry.

CanWWR (Devorah): I’m curious about the creative writing
community within academia as opposed to the creative writing community outside of academia. You were in the academy
and now you’re not. So any comments on that? On the way it
impacted your writing?

S.L.: Wonderful stuff. I think it’s really hard sometimes to read
people who are your contemporaries because it’s hard to situate
them. So you’re reading them more as friends and I wonder how
that type of reading also changes your perspective. But I think
it’s difficult for anyone— whoever’s writing book reviews in the
newspaper— to write anything about someone who’s writing
now.

S.L.: Yes, I pretty much always have a novel going. I always
have a book of poetry going. That’s another thing too. I think I
thought when I was younger that you had to read one book at a
time. And I’m always reading about ten at a time, at least. Coming from where I came from, all of those things are just radical
ideas, that you could read more than one— what a concept.

S.L.: That’s a really interesting point, because I always think
I’m somewhere in between. There are the writers who are
completely outside of academia, and I was there for a little bit,
but not for too long. But I do feel I have a lot of affinity for the
people within academia and respect them. I think it goes both
ways. We all have respect for each other as writers. The people
that are teaching in universities or colleges have a slightly different network and there’s a different connectivity between them
than those of us who work at stationary shops or don’t work
or don’t teach. We do connect in different ways. I sometimes
feel slightly out of the loop, because I’m not part of the university. I’m still trying to come to terms with all that because I do
feel very close to a lot of people; a lot of my friends teach at
universities. I don’t like to pit one against the other but there is a
different milieu that’s going on. It would be interesting to maybe
suss that out a bit more.

CanWWR (Amy): What about Canadian women writers, specifically? Do you find you read mostly women? Or does it matter?
Or do you find you read a lot of Canadian writing? Again, does
it matter?
S.L.: It matters a lot. And I do tend to read mostly women writers. And I do, very much, try to support my contemporaries. We
were talking about Facebook earlier, which is a very strange
little world, but it’s excellent for connecting Canadian women
writers. And the world of the blogs too is another whole thing
that didn’t exist for me even a couple years ago. But I really
want to support my contemporary writers, people that I’ve become friends with on Facebook and a lot of friends that I have,
I met them maybe once briefly or haven’t even met them in real
life, just in cyberspace. Which sounds really bizarre but it’s been
great for me to connect with women writers, and has given me
a lot of confidence in what I’m doing. And I feel like I have a
support group, which sounds too new-agey. But I do feel like we
have similar interests and that we are able, in the whole apparatus that surrounds contemporary writing, to be there for each

CanWWR (Patricia): But you probably feel you have a foot in
both worlds, don’t you? The world inside the academy and the
world of the stationary shop.
S.L.: Yes, that’s true.
CanWWR (Patricia): They’re not disconnected necessarily.
4

S.L.: They’re not at all disconnected. The more you go along,
the more you realize how connected they essentially are. As far
as my writing, though, I realized at a certain point that my writing would be better if I were on that side of the line, rather than
[the academic] one. But that’s not true for other people. I think
there’s that cliché or the thought that people in academia don’t
write poetry as well as those outside. Maybe there’s the reverse
snobbism. But I think it’s very individual and what works for
me is to not be here. But there are obviously wonderful things
being written by people who teach at universities. You can’t
make any generalization.
CanWWR (Patricia): Anything else?
S.L.: You had asked about the collaborative aspect of my work.
I didn’t quite get to that part of the question. There is a huge collaboration between my husband and I but I think it’s a lot more
organic than anything else. We usually don’t sit down and say,
“you do this and I’ll write about that.” Much more organic.
CanWWR (Amy): Do you find that sometimes you spontaneously come from a similar source or come to a similar conclusion?
S.L.: I think so, because we’re both looking.
CanWWR (Patricia): Perception.
S.L.: Right. Because we’re in the same universe, we do end up
looking at the same things and talking about how we’re looking
at them. And so that is what, I think, filters into our work.
CanWWR (Patricia): Who chooses the covers? You or Robert?
S.L.: Oh, I do. (Laughter)
CanWWR (Patricia): That was quite definite. (Laughter)
S.L.: Yes, but he’s very happy to let me use whatever I like.
There’s actually only been one book that hasn’t had one of his
paintings on the cover. It also comes out of the book naturally.
The choice seems to be almost obvious. With The Red Velvet
Forest, it was obvious that it had to be the red velvet painting.
CanWWR (Patricia): Well, thank you very much Shawna.

5