The And She Looked Up Podcast
Every other week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Your host, Melissa Hartfiel, left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, community co-founder and has owned and operated a multi-six figure a year creative content business. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
The And She Looked Up Podcast
EP179 Creative Canadian Women: Kim Fahner - Poet, Author and Community Builder
Award winning poet and writer Kim Fahner joins the show this week to share her creative journey and discuss the importance of forming a community of our peers. Forging nurturing and supportive connections with other creatives in a country as vast, and empty, as Canada can feel like a huge challenge - particularly for those in smaller or rural communities. We also discuss the copyright implications of AI for creators and why it's so important to support Canadian creatives and the businesses that support them more than ever.
Kim is the author of multiple poetry books as well as her debut novel, The Donoghue Girl, released earlier this year. She is also the first vice-chair of The Writer's Union of Canada, a teacher and an editor for Consilience, an online journal that explores the spaces where the sciences and arts meet.
This is a great episode for creatives who...
⭐️ are looking to forge new connections with their peers
⭐️ are considering mentoring or being mentored in the new year
⭐️ have thought about publishing poetry or are curious about the small press community in Canada
⭐️ are concerned about the copyright implications of AI and how it might impact our creativity
This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- find Kim at kimfahner.com or on Instagram at @kimfahner or on X at @modernirish
- The Donoghue Girl
- Consilience Journal
- The Writer's Union of Canada
- Latitude 46 Publishing
- Turnstone Press
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
- Instagram at @andshelookedup
- YouTube
- Tik Tok at @AndSheLookedUp
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
This week's episode of the and she Looked Up podcast is brought to you by our premium subscriber community on Patreon and Buzzsprout. Their ongoing financial support of the show ensures I can continue to bring the podcast to you. Want to help out? Head over to patreoncom. Forward slash, and she looked up. That's patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com. Forward slash, and she looked up. That's Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-Ncom. Forward slash, and she looked up. There you can join the community for free or you can choose to be a premium supporter for $4.50 a month, and that's in Canadian dollars. Paid supporters get access to a monthly exclusive podcast episode only available to premium subscribers. You can also click the support the show link in the episode notes on your podcast player to support us via Buzzsprout, where you will also get access to each month's exclusive premium supporter episode. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all our monthly supporters. They are the engine that keeps the podcast running and they're a pretty cool bunch too. And now let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the and she Looked Up podcast. Each week we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, melissa Hartfield, and after leaving a 20-year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six-figure-a-year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. As always, I'm your host, melissa, and this week I am really excited to be welcoming author Kim Foner to the post office. I was going to say the post office to the podcast. Welcome to the show, kim. It's lovely to have you here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. For those of you who may not be familiar with Kim, she lives, writes and teaches in Sudbury, ontario, and her debut novel, the Donahue Girl, which was published by Latitude 46, just came out a couple of weeks ago. Her next book is a poetry book called the Pollination Field and is being published by Turnstone Press, and that's going to be out this coming spring. And Kim is also the first vice chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, so we're going to be talking about all of that today, along with some other things. But, kim, the first question I ask everyone who comes on the show is did you feel like you were creative as a kid growing up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally did. Actually, I was sort of always on the outskirts of popular kids because I read a lot, so I escaped into books and I think I was writing stories, like creative stories, and little poems. When I was in elementary school I didn't forecast it being like something I would do for my life, alongside my work, you know, daily work but yeah, I was always reading and then playing with words on the paper. I couldn't paint for the life of me, though, like I couldn't do visual art when I was in high school or elementary school so, but the words just sort of gave me a safe place, a refuge from the world.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's always interesting how many people associate being creative with being a visual artist. When there's so many ways we can be creative as we're. Well, I think everyone's creative and I think we all have our own way of channeling that creativity. But how, at what point did you realize that writing is something you could actually do as a career?
Speaker 2:When did you have that moment or epiphany? Probably in my 20s, I guess. I had a small chapbook of poems published by a local press called Scrivener your Scrivener Press, and then after that, I started getting my next books. That were full books of poetry and I started to realize, okay, I can't make a living at this. But it wasn't really ever about making money, it was about the words just kept coming, the ideas kept coming and I knew I had to write them down. So, um, it's been intertwined with my work as a teacher for 23 years at least, and before that, before I began teaching, even in other jobs I had in my 20s, I just constantly wrote. So you know it's hard for me to separate writing from anything else. It's just parallel to my teaching career or any other jobs I've had. It's just part of who I am, and I guess that's why creativity is cool too.
Speaker 1:What kind of teacher are you? You mentioned before we started talking that you're a high school teacher, but what do you teach?
Speaker 2:I teach. I've taught English for a long, long time, and I also do special education. Okay, so, that's really fascinating and rewarding to working one-on-one with kids, you know.
Speaker 1:And it's not often. I work with a lot of writers, I've met a lot of writers, I've had writers on the show, but it's not often I come across one who is known for poetry or who gravitates to poetry. And so what made you go that route? Your first book, your first novel that just came out last month, is not your first book, but it is your first novel. You are much better known as a poet and, yeah, what is it about poetry that makes it special for you?
Speaker 2:It's funny, you know. I remember reading things like Tennyson and the Lady of Shalott in high school and thinking they were cool. And I really loved Shakespeare in high school, which was really poetry. I had great teachers in high school. I took a writer's craft course with Mr Carter when I was in grade 13, oac English, and he really encouraged me and poetry for some reason just seemed to come to me almost. I feel like it's almost a way of being and breathing. So even when I write novels or short stories or plays or essays, it's very poetic in terms of the prose I'm writing and I sort of it's very strange in terms of the prose I'm writing and I sort of it's very strange actually when I think about it. It's like I'll see something and want to write about it out in the natural world. It's the. I have a link between seeing something visual and wanting to write it too that's so interesting at that.
Speaker 1:No, that is really interesting, that that's just how your brain processes it, like that's yeah, yeah, um. The other thing that made me very curious when I was reading, doing my research on you is it's not often that you come across a poet, a canadian poet, um, who has published as many books as you have. You've written five full poetry collections that have been published. You've also written two chapbooks, and maybe we should just mention what a chapbook is for the audience, because I don't think it's a term a lot of people are familiar with.
Speaker 2:A chapbook's really a smaller collection, so in England I think they call them pamphlets instead of full books of poems. So they might be between they might be 20, 25, 30 pages of poetry, almost like a taster of something that so it could be a chapbook could include maybe a section in a larger book of poetry. So they. There are more presses, like Ian Letourneau's press called Emergency. Flash Mob is out of Fredericton and he's publishing chapbooks now and there are other ones across the country as well. So my first book was a chapbook and it sort of was well received and then I found a publisher who wanted to publish a full book.
Speaker 1:So because that, I think, is the stumbling block, that I hear from a lot of people who love poetry, or love writing poetry, but they've always felt that, for whatever reason, they will not become published as a poet. Their path to being published is a novel. And yet you have gone the opposite route. You've written five poetry collections before writing a novel, five poetry collections before writing a novel, and how were you able to make that happen? And if there's people out there listening wondering how they could possibly get published as a poet, what would you suggest to them?
Speaker 2:I would say I think you need to read a lot of poetry. I read it every day and even if I don't write it every day, I read poetry every day. When I'm writing a certain genre, I'll try to read that genre. So my head turns to that div of genre. But for publishing, I just had great mentors coming through my 20s who encouraged me to submit to journals across Canada and it took a long time. So I really didn't start to get more and more pieces published till I was in my 30s, like in journals, but I had already had a couple of books published. That it's kind of I went about it backwards in a way.
Speaker 2:But I think you can get published. I think it's about sending your work out to journals and not just to contests. I feel like people put their eggs in the basket of literary contests and I think it's great to do that, but not to just do that. And then someone an emerging writer I was mentoring said to me well, I don't like being rejected, so I don't send out to journals, but I think if you can, actually it's about why you're writing. Are you writing just to get published or are you writing just to you know? Get the idea out on paper, hopefully share it. Yes, of course you want it published, but if your sole goal is to rush to publish, I don't, I don't know. I feel like sometimes it does take time, it's not impossible, and so I think also finding people who can mentor you and encourage you is really important, especially in poetry.
Speaker 1:It's a really unique genre it is, yeah, and I think there's always this feeling that it's just not commercially viable. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:I guess you know I have the best poetic community across Canada and across other parts of the world from all I've met, and they're the the coolest people I know are poets, um poets and visual artists and singers, songwriters and actors and that kind of, and playwrights, I don't know. I feel maybe if you're going to be a poet, you kind of know it's not about making a million dollars, right? So there are very few that will reach that kind of plateau in that genre. But I, oh, I'm idealistic this way. I feel like you should just create because you feel this drive to create and then send it out and hopefully it does get published. I think it, you know. But if you just tie it to um monetary things, then I don't know, I doubt that many people can make a live. I don't, I don't know anyone who can.
Speaker 2:I mean, rupee cower is a good example of someone, but she's rare billy might be yeah you know in the states someone mary oliver, so that kind of commercialized success, I can't you know.
Speaker 1:Possibly I think that's there, but I don't see it happening very often and this year you published your first full length novel big change in genre. It's called the Donahue Girl and maybe just tell us, tell us a little bit about the book first of all, and what it's about great-grandfather was James Cornelius Kelly and he was the first recorded merchant in Creighton, which was a tiny mining town outside of Sudbury.
Speaker 2:It's gone, now it's a company town and sometimes they just disappear. The company just scrapes them off or moves houses out. So I had heard stories about Creighton from my great-ats and my grandmother and the story that I heard was that my maternal grandfather dated my great aunt Nora Kelly, dumped her and married my grandmother, Alice Kelly, and I thought I had never heard this in two of my great aunts when I was in my late twenties. They were closer to 80, then said this and I thought what, what that can't be true. Closer to 80. Then said this and I thought what, what that can't be true. And then no one could tell me whether or not the story was true. Different people thought it was not true and I just thought doesn't matter, it's an interesting enough piece that I could create this world in this unique place in northern Ontario, because I feel so often that regionalized literature and stories are forgotten.
Speaker 2:Yes yes, that work. I feel like I've always written from this area, I've traveled around and I've lived in other places, but this, this place, is really beautiful and raw and also just disturbing sometimes, just because of the way mining works, right.
Speaker 1:What made you decide to tackle a?
Speaker 2:long-form novel. It's so different from a poem or from poetry. No, I've been writing short stories for years. So I worked with Timothy Finley as a mentor through the Humber School for Writers back in my late 20s and he was very encouraging of my short prose work. And then in 2014-15, I took a playwriting course with a fellow named Matthew Hady up here at the Sudbury Theatre Centre, and one exercise was to write a monologue or a scene that could be a one-act play, and I wrote something about this story that was in my head and I said to Matthew I think it's bigger. And he said I think it should be bigger too. And I said I can't manage going from the city of a poem to the country of a novel.
Speaker 1:You know that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't see how to build the architecture of that structure and he just said just build it as you would a play scene by scene, and so his encouragement was really important. And then I worked with Mar um Marnie Woodrow, who's a you know, a book coach, and and back then she so she kind of worked alongside me and I was learning craft there. And then I worked with Lawrence Hill at Banff in 2016 on an earlier draft of this piece. So those are the you know, four people for me as a prose writer, whether short or long, who have been really instrumental in how I've managed to sort of conceptualize and then write a longer piece.
Speaker 1:And now that so obviously the story's been with you for a long time and you've been working on this for quite some time, and now that it's out there into the world, do you think there's another novel in your system? Did you enjoy it enough that you would go down that route?
Speaker 2:I have I'm almost finished another novel that's a modern contemporary novel. So yeah, I'm hooked on it. I think just because I love the idea that if I have an idea for a story, something in my head tells me this is just a poem, this might be a creative nonfiction essay, this might be a short story. Something now has it's almost like a switch goes off and I can tell where what genre should be, which story you know kind of conceptualize it that way.
Speaker 1:I don't know a lot of writers who could do that, so I think that's really neat that you're able to see that in your head and not only see it but execute the um in each of those genres.
Speaker 2:So that's yeah, well, there are lots of people like I'm thinking of people I know who are multi genre writers, like Gary Barwin writes poetry, essays, novels. Tannis McDonald, uh, writes poetry and essays.
Speaker 2:So I, some of the people that I'm colleagues with as a writer, I can see that that're able to. Yeah, I don't know when that started happening. It feels fluid to me and maybe that's what you know. We're thinking about the creative process that's really fluid and that I maybe can't box it and that maybe initially I thought I had to box it, because I remember saying to Larry Hill at BAMF I said I a poet and he said, no, you're a writer. And I thought that blew my mind, because then I thought what does that mean? Because you know, people will just define me as a poet and some people have for many, many years now, like 30 years, so this is a big shift for them. But I've been writing other genres in between. As this piece, this took 10 years from start to finish, so I'm a slow writer well, you've got a second one under your belt now it sounds like.
Speaker 1:So you know production no, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I hadn't thought of it that way, the fluidity of it.
Speaker 1:But as a visual artist, I'm, you know, I'm an illustrator and I'm a graphic designer and I work in different mediums as an illustrator and I I never thought of it like you said.
Speaker 1:It's very fluid, um, but they're both visual arts, so I hadn't really hadn't really thought about it that way, so you just made me think about it in a whole different, different way. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about that I saw as I was doing my research is you are an editor for Consilience, which I had never heard of until reading this, but it sounds so cool. It's an online journal that explores where the sciences and the arts meet, and this is something that I find so interested, because we've actually had a lot of scientists on the show who are now artists and creatives, a few with their PhDs in the sciences, and I think people think they are two completely separate things, and yet there's so much creativity in the sciences, and so, yeah, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that, or tell me a little bit more. I'm just this is what I want to know about.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that journal was begun by a fellow named Sam Illingworth and he's really brilliant and he works on the conjunction of science and poetry. I think, when you think about it, scientists do the same things that poets do, which is to look very closely and to examine things and then see them in terms of you could look at a certain butterfly and see it in terms of a whole other, the implications inside a bigger system, and I think that's what poets do too. They look at particulars but then sort of point to universals, right? So I found that really interesting. And then I think I I'm really drawn to eco poetry, just given the state of the world and the natural world and how we've been so destructive as humans over the times we've been here, that, um, I've been writing eco poetry, but I didn't know what it was, you know, and I write ekphrastic poetry as well, so these kinds of poetry were always there and sometimes they dovetail.
Speaker 1:but um, I think, what are those? No, no, I'm just for myself and for the audience, like what is kind of the definition of um eco poetry? And, sorry, what was the other one that you mentioned? Ekphrastic, ekphrastic, yeah, that I've never heard of. So what, what, what are those exactly?
Speaker 2:so eco poetry is poetry that um speaks to the natural world and so raises awareness about environmentalism, really. So there's some fantastic writers, you know, and just thinking about the positioning of how, how we write about the world as we move through it in times that are really bleak, when you look at climate change and now it's not climate change but climate crisis right, I'm thinking of Joanna Lilly's beautiful book Endlings, which is about all. She's written a book of wonderful poems about at risk and extinct species over time. And just the number of these poems where she researched these little creatures animals to insects, you know across the board just to see that that's shocking when you actually see that sort of like roll call of animals and creatures. And then Yvonne Blomer's wonderful work as an eco poet has been really instrumental for me.
Speaker 2:I think there are a lot of women eco poets out there, yeah, and a number of great Canadian eco poets who are just really mindful of how, how you can use the art of poetry to raise awareness. And that's what Sam's doing with consilience, you know. I believe what the work he's doing is really important. And it's interesting because, being an editor on that journal, I get to see scientists who write poetry, and then I'm trying to, because my head is not that sciencey, but they are very sciencey and I'm. It's interesting to see how they're making poetry from what their specific field is. They also have particular fields, just like poets might. So, and then the other definition is ekphrastic poetry, and that's poetry that's inspired by visual art actually. Oh, okay, that's interesting. Yeah, so I've written various suites of poetry on Frida Kahlo, georgia O'Keeffe, mary Pratt, maud Liu. That's so cool. Yeah, I'm really interested in how these women artists manage the times when they lived, and sometimes their partners were really not nice humans.
Speaker 2:So, how did they manage to create these wonderful things? And sometimes the men they were with overshadowed them, but they still sort of like. Even with Mary Pratt she sort of like was eclipsed by Christopher and then rose above him after and I just think there's something really feminist about it. But I'm fascinated by women artists and I write mostly about women artists. I did write a couple of pieces about Alex Colville's work because of the uh, just the, the photographic sort of like beauty of his work. That sort of you know, christopher Pratt, alex Colville work is just so stunning that's really cool.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have to find some of your stuff that you've written on that, because that really speaks to me as an artist. So yeah, no it just I hadn't heard of the journal until reading about you and I'm just like this is really cool. I have to know more about this. So now you mentioned earlier in the interview that you don't make a full-time living from poetry, and I think most of us working creatives have multiple revenue streams.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about the things you do outside of writing as well, the things you do outside of writing as well.
Speaker 2:I teach full time. I'm a high school teacher so I've taught. Since I've been teaching high school English I did a year of teaching history. I've done some work in the guidance department, student success and resource and special education at a high school here in town. It was a girls' school called Marymount Academy. It's where I went to school and I sort of marinate the kids in poetry if they're in my class, because some teachers, through the levels of grades, avoid poetry. So when I was laureate here I was poet laureate in Sudbury I made a point of trying to get into classrooms in other places around the region just because I felt like sometimes teachers are afraid of teaching poetry because they were. It's something that people are alienated by, when really it should be something that's accessible and that you should feel invited into, not that it's difficult or elitist, that there's a voice for everyone, and I love using creative writing with kids because they have a lot to say. They're really brilliant teenagers. People don't listen to them enough, I don't think.
Speaker 1:No, I think you're right, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and not everyone can paint or draw, and so I always try to dig into people creatively through writing in my classes, just to see what comes out, because it's fascinating, and I also think it's helpful for them to work through things in their own lives. If they can write or express However they do that they can skate, dance, you know, play football, it doesn't matter, as long as they're expressing themselves. I feel they should have a buffet of choices to feel more okay with who they are, because mental health is a big issue for teenagers, right?
Speaker 1:And for adults. Yeah, but I think when you learn the tools as a teenager to help you deal with it which you and I, we were talking before recording we're very close in age and that is not something that we were given as teenagers, but when you get those tools or you have access to those tools as a teenager, it helps you out so much as an adult to understand that, yeah, journaling or writing or painting something really huge on a canvas can really help you work through so many things. And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So many kids did crochet work through the pandemic and knitting. They would come back after the pandemic was starting to. You know, because we were in quad masters and then we came back part time and part virtual. And then they came back and they were like, miss, I have this scarf, and so they had done that and I just thought that's the coolest. Or they had learned, they'd focused on cooking and I thought so there's so many ways to be creative and if we can get our kids doing that, I think you're right, they'll be better set for life, because life as an adult is hard, yeah it was hard as a teenager.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't go back to that for any money. Yeah, absolutely no. I think I love it when I see I always felt in school that if you weren't an athlete, there wasn't very many places for you. Um, especially as a kid who was, you know, quintessentially creative. Um, there was drama club and that was about it, and um, and I just I feel like if we put as much emphasis on creative arts or, like you said, whatever, as we do on sports, in high school.
Speaker 1:That would be helpful to so many kids For sure. One of the things that has been really apparent, not just reading about you but also just talking to you, is you take community very seriously. You are obviously very involved in your own writing community, but in the Canadian writing community as a whole. You are the first vice chair for the Writers Union of Canada, among other things. Maybe tell us a little bit about, first of all, what the Writers Union of Canada does and what it is that you do there.
Speaker 2:Well, it's been. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary about a year ago. So it's an organization that was established to sort of, you know, unite writers but also fight for the rights of writers, because and now currently it's a fight for copyright yes, law um, just even in post-secondary and and um education. You know, copying books and it just does not work for any of us. So that's a big thing. A big part of our focus is that is, to make sure that we fight for copyright law reform and that writers are properly compensated, that you know there are things like universal income that might be of interest. So we have so many programs that are great for people. We have webinars every month and there's a mentorship micro grant so we can have emerging writers mentored by more veteran ones. You know, and creating community is what TWOC is about. It's the Writers Union of Canada. We call it TWOC, yeah, so, and it's just, I came to it before the pandemic and I was volunteering on one of the committees and then someone said, oh, you should be Ontario rep.
Speaker 2:So then I thought, oh, I should be Ontario rep. So then I thought, oh, I'll be Ontario rep, and I sort of created an open mic night during the pandemic online, and then I did a newsletter just to create community because we were so far apart. Then I for you, for we forget how hard that was right it was yeah, yeah, and yet it was artists who kind of all came together?
Speaker 1:and you know you had people reading bedtime stories on youtube and doing all kinds of things, um, and so I think if ever there was a point where we proved how important we are to the world, it was during that first part of the pandemic where nobody knew what to do, when they were stuck at home and they realized how much they relied on Netflix and all these other things where you know you. You need creatives and creators to create all that art that you can do.
Speaker 2:How would, how would people have been mentally through that time if they didn't have access to all that? Like, the time and place of this pandemic was good in the fact that you could access the arts online, right, yeah, but I still, you know, I still think we're taken for granted, and I think of cuts to the arts nationally, provincially, across this country. Yeah, I was having to fight, even in municipalities, for certain grants. I just think we're always, as artists, having to sort of prove the value of art. You would think you're right, though, that that would have been a turning point, but we still. That's one part of 12.11 is that we still fight for for those things to be recognized and properly compensated, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you worry about? This wasn't one of the questions I put at you beforehand. But but do you worry about speaking of copyright, like where I ai is going and you're?
Speaker 2:I knew you were gonna say ai is it. Just you can't. Oh my gosh, so worried. Yeah, it's worried. It's a new part of what we're talking about at twerk, because it's a different kind of copyright, copyright law because I it's just ridiculous to me that some kind of forest can gather up books instantaneously, sort of learn from them and then write something in the style of an author that's similar. I don't think it's. I'm very mdi.
Speaker 1:It's like locusts hitting a field, you know, and just like consuming it all in in seconds, flat and just leaving this barren landscape. And and I just feel, from a copyright perspective, the world is not keeping up and and is so hard to once the genie's out of the bottle, you can't put it back in, right you? So it's just going to be catch-up, constant catch-up, and I, I mean, I'm not afraid of ai as a tool. I, I do use it from things, but I am, I don't, I, I don't agree with this concept that it can just take what we create and amalgamate it and spit it back out in various forms. That, without compensation for what we're doing. That just doesn't sit well with me at all well, how do you?
Speaker 2:I mean, how do you regulate this thing? It's like a pandora's box that's been opened. It's like your genie in the bottle metaphor, right, I just I just feel it's beyond. It's very scary, I think. And if you're creative, the question is well, what's creativity and what makes a human a human, and what? Where does that creative spark come from? And that takes time. All of us, as creatives, take time to create whatever we're creating, and the fact that something can sort of like gobble it up and spit it out in some other form, that's like our form, and then for us not to be compensated. I just think there's so many ethical issues here and I don't think it's going to get simpler. I think it's going to be a larger, harder fight, but I think we have to keep speaking up against it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I know I can keep creating. I'm a creative, I'm a creator, that's what I do and I can keep creating. I'm not worried about that part of it and I know there will always be people who will want my original work. But yeah, it's this underlying piece of the fact that my work can just be gobbled up gross.
Speaker 2:It is gross very sort of like um, zombie, like almost, you know, yeah, and I feel like there's a lack of ethics and morals. And then I know, you know it's big money, it's big business, and then so many writers, so many artists of any ilk or genre are living close to the poverty line. Even in a gig economy, right, a contract economy, people with like four or five different jobs and being a creative on the side, they're still living close to the poverty line. There's not a lot of writers who make enough money to work full time and support themselves. You know there might be a few, I'm sure there are, but I, you know, most people I know, have day jobs and then write on the side. And then you know, yeah, yeah it.
Speaker 1:uh. It's something I think about. I think we all think about it a lot and uh, and it just feels like it's something I think about. I think we all think about it a lot and uh, and it just feels like it's promoting mediocrity.
Speaker 1:I don't you know yeah, that's a good way of putting it, it's yeah, it's just the stuff that you know I I will often sit down with chat gpt and I use it for the podcast to help me put together a podcast outline, you know, or anything. But anytime I I use it for the podcast to help me put together a podcast outline, you know, or anything. But anytime I use it to write product descriptions on my website and it churns it out and it's like okay, but it needs to be fixed. It doesn't like it just sounds generic. I need to make this sound cool.
Speaker 2:You know, like the human aspect is missing. Yeah, I can tell, as an English teacher, somebody hands in an essay. That's chat, gpt, pretty much people would argue with me but it's kind of devoid of a voice. It has all the stuff that it might need at the basic level but there's no sort of individual spark there. I think that's where our individual creativity or spirit, you know, whatever um is it. I mean, look at the different artists through history. They're all so unique, we're all so different but we're coming from the same place creatively but we're all kind of unique in our whatever we do inside our genres. Yeah, to think that you could try to it drives me a bit bonkers, to be honest, because I worry about it a great deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I honestly try not to think about it too much, right? It depresses me.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think what you said is really important, we keep creating. So, regardless of what that's doing, and regardless, we keep fighting against those things that might, you know, be detrimental to the creation of art.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, and this is where I think community actually plays a really big role is when you are able to surround yourself with other artists, either in your field or in completely unrelated creative fields or even fields that aren't creative but also building a community of people who love what you do and want to read your books or buy your art or whatever, and so this is one of the things that we were going to talk about for the last little bit of the. The interview is yeah, like you're working with the Writers Union of Canada and like what is it for you personally that you get out of this idea of community? Why is it you're so drawn to it? Because you obviously are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always been really involved in community volunteer work since I was young. I mean, I remember having to do 40 hours to graduate high school in Ontario, I'm pretty sure, probably common for most people and then my parents were grand volunteers and so I just saw them going out at night to meetings, you know, and things like that and they just they always sort of instilled in me the value of giving back to the community in which you live. So I've been on volunteer committees here in Sudbury my whole life really, and then I turned towards TWOC, just focusing on that in a different sort of community, in a larger aspect.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I've volunteered my whole life, so so and being a writer, like writing, can be a very solitary pursuit for a lot of us. Um, and did you feel like you needed, like the like, a support network almost I don't know if that's the right word for it but, um, just to kind of have other writers around you that you could talk, to bounce ideas off? For? Um, because I, I always get the field the feeling, no matter what area I'm working in, there's always you know, my last business we used to put on a conference, a three-day conference, and where people could come and was for it was for bloggers, food bloggers and they would come and they would get to. You know, learn about photography and.
Speaker 1:SEO and all that stuff. And the most common thing we heard at the end in the conference evaluations was I'm really just here for the people or I'm just here to talk to all my peers. This is the only opportunity I get to meet with my peers. I wish we had more time to network. I wish we had more time to chat and I honestly said to my business partner we could scrap the workshops and we could just put them all in a big room for a couple of days, and I think they'd be really happy, because I feel like for so many of us, we don't get that connection. It's not like a job where you go to an office every day and you have people that you can talk to and all that, and so, yeah, do you get that feeling from a lot of the writers and other creatives that you talk to that that's something they really need?
Speaker 2:I think that's a large part of the union is. You know, some people will call it networking. I don't feel like that's what it is. For me it's building community. It's like an extended family, it's a support.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, and you mentioned mentorship multiple times earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe in that a great deal. I do it here locally with emerging writers, and I've worked with people nationally. I feel that I didn't initially, as a young emerging writer, have a mentor. I had some teachers who were brilliant and some university professors at Laurentian who were brilliant and encouraging me. But, yeah, I think mentorship is huge.
Speaker 2:And I also just think, when you talk about volunteerism, that whole notion, you're going to hopefully find people with similar values, right, yeah, and not everybody volunteers, but the people I choose to associate with do so. Not all of them are you know. Know it doesn't mean just because you volunteer you're this perfect person. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say I like the notion that we think we can leave the world a better place after we've gone, that we have a legacy in how we give back to younger generations.
Speaker 2:And and for me, I think, as a teacher of young people, I like chose a profession where I'm doing that every day. It's like planting seeds for the future and that also, I think, happens with my work. And talk like just the notion that you're encouraging younger writers and that that's a legacy, that's a living legacy. Yeah, I think I worry about volunteerism though, because I often hear you know well, it's not paid work and I understand that it's so hard, right with this economy, to volunteer on top of working, and that's it's a choice you make to volunteer, because sometimes the work I do as a volunteer for TWOC is a large amount of time on top of my job and I don't ever resent it, I love it with people who don't want to mentor or anything is like it's not paid, I don't have the time, and yet I feel like you get just as much back from it as you put into it, like it's not always about.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, money's great, I like money, but I also like to feel, um, you know and this takes the altruism out of it, I guess but I like to feel like I helped somebody see something they might not have seen on their own. You know, like if I could just kind of point them in the right direction so that they can keep growing or whatever it is that they're trying to do, and that just is immensely self-satisfying. That's teaching. Yes, and I actually started out to be a teacher.
Speaker 2:There you go, because you're describing what we do educators do every day, which is not. It's funny. I always think people think we tell kids what they need to learn, but I think it's about asking them questions to make them think differently or to see other pathways and possibilities, and so, oh, I had this one way of looking at it, but now we've had this big conversation in class and it's expanded to make me think about other possible viewpoints. So then they go out thinking and questioning things, right, yeah, yeah yeah, now we're.
Speaker 1:We live in a country that's just geographically huge and it's very, very rural in most of it, and I think you know it's not hard to find an in-person writer's meetup in Toronto or Vancouver. There's even a group here in the little suburb that I'm in that meets up, but when you get further out I feel like those opportunities are fewer and farther between. So for people who are living in those more rural areas where they can't just hop in their car and go meet up with some folks at the library, um, or wherever, or a coffee shop, what are some ways that they can build a community around them of other writers or other creatives? Do you have any suggestions for them?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm just thinking about. I think the pandemic really taught me a lot about that. That you, you know we have zoom fatigue and everything else that we talk about in the world, but it did sort of open up doors for online courses for writers. So I've taken online courses for poets, um, through the pandemic and afterwards, and that sort of is cool because you can spend this a Sunday afternoon with people from across the country. That would never have happened before, no, oh um, and then you make, you make friends, you find people who are like-minded and you're kind of your souls kind of resonate, and so then you connect with people, um, and I think just in towns I know, like we have Sudbury Writers Guild, there are regional writers guilds across the country. There are places like TWOC or the Canadian Authors Association or the League of Canadian Poets and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. These organizations work to sort of create community inside those rural areas.
Speaker 2:That's something I'm really interested in working on when I become chair of TWOC next year is to think about how a lot of writers tend to gravitate towards bigger centers like Toronto, vancouver, montreal, you know, and then smaller places even like Halifax, st John's, sudbury, beyond that, timmins, north Bay, the Sioux, in my neck of the woods in Northern Ontario, yellowknife. You know we can't forget that people are up there writing, up here writing, and that that you know to pull them together. So I know, you know we've done a lot of work at TWC with sort of creating communities in those smaller areas and I hope we continue to do that. I think we have so many stories across Canada that need to be written and published and I sometimes worry that not all stories are heard. That's why I love Latitude 46. It's a Northern Ontario press and so this story of mine you know, about this family just before World War II, might not have been heard anywhere else except for a press that is willing to speak up and give a stage to northern writers.
Speaker 1:so there's, there's a gap and there's a hole in rural literature and public and yet some of our best stories are in those places, like I just think most of us who live in cities now, our families are not city families. My relatives were all farmers or immigrants who wound up on farmland, who didn't necessarily want to be farmers. So I think there's a lot of stories that need to be told. And I just want to ask you one more question, because you mentioned the press press, the latitude 64 press that you are working with, like I think we think that there's like penguin, random house and harper collins, and then if you don't get published with them, there's nobody else out there. But how do you go about finding all these small little presses out there? Because there are a lot of them and they are out there. But how do you go about finding all these small little presses out there? Cause there are a lot of them and they are out there. But how do you find them? How do you hear about them?
Speaker 2:You. I'm hoping that people need to read Canadian books. So, yes, go to the big publishers, for sure, and there are some Canadian writers published by the big publishers. But there's such great small Canadian presses Like. So my earlier books were published by people like Penumbra, um, um Peddler they're both P words Black Moss out of Windsor and then um Frontenac out of Calgary and now Turnstone out of Winnipeg. So um, there's ECW, there's Book Hug.
Speaker 2:There's so many presses I can't name them all so we'll second win. There's Caitlin Press in BC. There's, you know, loads of presses across the country. They're out there on the internet and when you pick up small press work, you're supporting Canadian presses and authors and that's really key. Also, just to support indie bookstores across Canada. If you can, I think to go small rather than large like the default is, let's go to the big fat, glorious bestseller by a big press or go to a big bookstore. I would say no, you should look for the small gems in presses across Canada, because there's so many great little presses and they're just as amazing as these bigger ones. So I'm not really, but I guess in the writing community we might be more aware of that than people yes, yeah, and I think that's the thing is as readers and I know a lot of our listeners are also readers, even if they're not writers but it's just not knowing that there's other options out there.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are aware that they can self-publish, and that's a viable option too, but um, yeah, there are other people out there who are willing to read what you've written and yes turn it into something that others dig around, dig around, go.
Speaker 2:The best thing I could say is find your indie bookstore and go in there and ask whoever the bookseller is, because indie booksellers, indie bookstore booksellers, are brilliant readers and they know that you could pick one. I'm sure you're thinking of one that you know. Even If you go in and you know the person who's always there, who reads voraciously, who can point you to a story that's set in Eastern Canada, they will take you to a press that likely is a smaller Canadian press, by an author you might not have heard of before. It doesn't mean that they're not fantastic. Yeah, hidden gems, right, yeah, well, yeah, there's so many fantastic Canadian writers out there. It's a wonderful buffet.
Speaker 1:It is something for everyone. Yeah, so before we wrap up here, why don't you tell us a little bit about what's next for you? You've mentioned you have another poetry collection coming out in the spring. You've just finished work on a draft of your next novel. So what do you see happening in the next year or two for you?
Speaker 2:Well, I just. My next book is a book of bee poetry, so it's looking at bees in terms of they're being threatened by climate crisis and climate change, and also it's examining mythopoetic ideas around bees and also the bee as sort of like a symbol of oh my goodness, um sort of the transformational time that you go through as a menopausal, perimenopausal woman. So there's a lot of feminist stuff in there. My name means honeybee in greek.
Speaker 1:That's what melissa means, and yes, in greek oh, that's wild.
Speaker 2:that's wild, totally poetic, divination happening here.
Speaker 1:So I've always thought, you know, I've always I've been thinking about getting a tattoo since I was like 16 and I've never been able to come up with one that I think I could could sit with for the rest of my life. But the one that kind of does come into my head every now and then is like well, you could do a honeybee. That like makes sense.
Speaker 2:So I just got one from. Well, I got one a couple of years ago, um, with some barn swallows for some my parents and my grandmother, and then the words no laid to marry, which were Seamus Heaney's last words. So be not afraid, that's cool yeah, yeah, you could call, if I could do that after all these years of me being afraid of them, you can totally do a honeybee, I think yeah, it's not the fear of getting the tattoo, and I have a cousin who's a tattoo artist who would do it, but it's just more like, well, I hate it.
Speaker 1:You know, 10 years from now will I be thinking like, why did I do this? But anyways, so I will have to read your book of B poetry, excellent Thanks. And your next novel do you have like a an estimated date for that, or is that still a little ways away?
Speaker 2:I'm just writing the last. I'm writing the last part of the lot, the end of it. So I feel that there's 50 pages left and then that's the first draft. So then I'm in the next like six to seven months sending it to a couple of writer friends to read for me, and then I'll start sending it out, probably next fall, next, I think, next summer. Maybe we'll see how it goes. I always have timelines, otherwise I just won't move forward. And then but it's fairly close to being, that draft is almost done and I've done a lot more work on it. I think now that I've been I've gone through the 10 year novel writing process with the Donahue girl, I'm much more clean and confident in my writing for the second one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, cut down the timeline a little bit. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us today, kim. Where can people find you out on the wild internet world of the wind, the wild, anyway? Where can people find you on the internet?
Speaker 2:They'll find me at my website, so it's just wwwkimfahnercom.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we will put links to that, of course, in the show notes, and we will. Also, I will try to put as many links to all of the authors that you mentioned throughout the interview, because you mentioned some really great names that I'm sure people will want to check out, and we will also make sure we put a link to where they can find your book as well, your newest novel. So that was great. Yes, thank you so much. It was so much fun. This was fun and I really enjoyed it and, yeah, I'm so glad that we could have this opportunity to chat. So, for all of you listening, that is it for this week.
Speaker 1:We will be back with another brand new episode for season six in two weeks, but in the meantime, we will be continuing on with the prep for the holidays minisode series that you can listen to every thursday between now and the end of the year. So that is it for this week. Thank you all so for listening, and we will talk to you all soon. Thank you so much for joining us for the and she Looked Up Creative Hour.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for links or resources mentioned in this episode, you can find detailed show notes on our website at andshelookedupcom. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more business tips, profiles of inspiring Canadian creative women and so much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the show via your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave us a review through iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Drop us a note via our website at andshelookedupcom, or come say hi on Instagram at andshelookedup. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
