Inspiration – Gayle Nemeth: Writing The Will

Psychic Insight

To keep us squirts amused during the summer months, Margaret, my grandmother often humoured us by reading our tea leaves to predict the future as she sat with us in her pink polyester pyjamas, snug in her kitchen after breakfast, the fire in the wood-burning stove behind us, giving off one last crack before burningContinue reading “Psychic Insight”

If It Is Made for Good, It’s Good

I had not expected to find myself driving down into the Qu’Appelle Valley that crisp but brilliantly sunny morning last October. As I looked across, I saw the valley and the hills as a palette of people’s lives over generations, their history a small slice relative to the valley’s glacial formation. Three days earlier, I’dContinue reading “If It Is Made for Good, It’s Good“

Lost Harvests

Saskatoon farm with a cow behind barbed wire

“Andrew was one of the best farmers in the area” —my grandmother’s words as we stood in the kitchen that summer day. I remember wondering even then at the age of 9 what it would have been like to farm in any capacity on the reserve – let alone be one of the best inContinue reading “Lost Harvests”

Slàinte Mhath

As our plane prepared to land over the sodden green fields surrounding the Glasgow airport, I distinctly sensed how natural it seemed to be arriving there. After my visit to Eagle Island, I knew then that Islay would be my next island visit. My sixteen-year-old daughter, Jessica, and I had spent the winter planning anContinue reading “Slàinte Mhath”

The Isle is Full of Noises

Alistair MacLeod’s Island is one of my favourite books of short stories. When I read James Wood’s Guardian review of MacLeod’s collection, his reference to the Shakespearean line “the isle is full of noises” brought to mind the noises in the form of voices of people whose stories I drew upon when writing The Will.Continue reading “The Isle is Full of Noises“

Riding and Writing

How poetry and riding have guided my growth as a creative writer.

Nests

Poet Neil Aitkens once shared with me the concept of our childhood homes as “nests,” our need to return to them, at least in a literary sense. The idea for my first manuscript emerged from visits that took place at my childhood home: my grandmother’s visits to our farm home, and those of my father’sContinue reading “Nests”