Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of three books of fiction, including Dogs at the Perimeter, which was shortlisted for the 2014 International Literature Prize and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Lißeraturpreis. Her multimedia project for Dogs at the Perimeter can be found here.

Her books have been translated into 22 languages and her essays, interviews and fiction are widely published, including in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Globe & Mail, Granta, Brick and The Asia Literary Review. She was part of the founding faculty of the MFA Programme at City University of Hong Kong, and is the 2015 Writer-in-Residence at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. A new novel, Awake Now and Cross Towards Her, is forthcoming in 2016.

Madeleine Thien’s website

Twitter: @madeleinethien

Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien (Granta cover)

HOW DID YOU…

A few years ago my sister in law asked me how my books were coming and I replied (in typical angsty artist mode) that things were terrible. I had hit a wall and could not think of another idea to save my life.

She smiled and suggested, “What don’t you write a book based on your life?” A story about a princess whose life is invaded by dragons? “

This was brilliant! Why hadn’t I thought about it? My 5 year old daughter had been a good sport about her life being invaded by twin brothers but it had pretty much taken all of the pink and purple and replaced it with diapers and crying.

The story flowed. My agent liked it, we made revisions. and more revisions and a few more. Then I created a book dummy filled with drawings. Revised those. Created two finals paintings that went through…

Conversations with Caleb, now 4 years plus, has become increasingly entertaining and surprising. I keep telling myself that one day, he will make a great character for the book that I want to write. But until then…

Calvin & Hobbs comics

A few weeks ago, Caleb had a day off pre-school so we decided to meet Ben for lunch at his workplace. After lunch, Ben walked us to the multi-storey carpark and waved us off at storey 6 where we were parked.

As I drove down to storey 5, we spotted Ben standing at the same spot (one floor down) waving goodbye again.

“Hey, look, there are two Papas!” I exclaimed. Being a children’s writer has made me a child again.

“No,” Caleb said, in a tone an adult would say to a child. “It’s the same Papa.”

As we circled down storey 4, Ben was there again, waving goodbye.

The depth of our gratitude is endless, as these people put it all on the line, affording the rest of us more time to rack our brains to come up with a solution. We are indebted to them all for their perseverance and very existence, as without them we would never fully possess our sanity, let alone be able to sleep. To know they are there, on guard, watching, listening; it is a comfort like no other.

Thank you for your hearts, your strength. KNOW we stand beside you during the patrols, in the silence of the night, in the heat of the forest, during times of fear, fatigue, and despair. You are each an inspiration, a hero.

Thank you for everything you do. You are a blessing to the animals. May God keep you safe. -Gerri

Thank you to all the wonderful Rangers that perform such a dedicated job to help…

Keep your plotting on track from picture books to chapter books using at-a-glance diagrams.

Having settled into a groove with my picture book process I found myself venturing into unchartered territory with a chapter book project. The idea had been noodling around (with countless embarrassing ‘first’ drafts) for a few years but it’s always ended up back in the drawer with the book going nowhere and me feeling utterly out of my depth.

I’m used to working with less than a 500-word count and had no idea how to handle THOUSANDS of words—let alone think about plots, sub plots, chapters, multiple characters, cliff hangers and such. I needed to figure out how to break this project down so I didn’t feel like I was drowning.

“The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on that first one.”
—Mark Twain.”

That’s…

Mountain climbing, space opera, gangland violence, dotty old ladies, high-wire adventurers, and people who turn into lobsters.

It must be TIFF.

The Toronto International Film Festival announced its lineup today.

Here are some of the films which will be jostling for attention, many of which will possibly feature in next year’s Awards race. Big names like Matt Damon, Tom Hardy, Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, and Idris Elba are all bringing movies to the Festival of Festivals.

Author is the name that everyone throws around. But what about storytellers? Storytelling is also known as a verbal art, but storytelling in terms of the words on a page is what agents are looking for in the slush pile. In the slush we know that writers are just beginning their journey so we’re looking for a glimmer of the future. So what that means is that we’re looking for writers whoknow how to craft curiously.

We are looking for interesting characters, smart butambitious plots, hidden turns of events, and larger than life settings. Life is all in the details, are so are storytellers.

4 Reasons Agents Want To Work With Storytellers

1. Storytelling transcends the page. — Crafting a tale that is big, real, honest, curious and insightful is something that doesn’t just live in books. It can become a part of our culture that is so much bigger…

Recently, during a major decluttering exercise involving thirty or forty archive boxes, I came across a collection of my undergraduate literature assignments (do I need to mention I’m a hoarder?). As I sorted through them, I was reminded that long before Susan Midalia and I became friends, and writing and editing colleagues, she had been my lecturer and tutor in a unit on Australian Literature and Film—a unit I had loved, not least because Susan is the most inspiring of teachers. I think she has been teaching me, in one way or another, ever since.

Susan retired from an academic career in 2006 to write fiction full-time, and her new book follows A History of the Beanbag (2007), shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and An Unknown Sky (2012), shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award. She is, or has been, a judge of several literary awards, including the…