Some writers just seem to have led more interesting lives. I can’t help but be a little envious of the CV belonging to Raymond Beauchemin: a journalist first in New England, then at the Gazette in Montreal, one of my favourite cities; then for several years the deputy foreign editor of a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Of all his experiences, it’s Beauchemin’s 18-or-so years in Montreal that seem to have most informed his first novel, Everything I Own. The Quebecois music scene forms a big part of the novel; its structure, Beauchemin has said, is a modified form of thirty-two-bar blues, the story divided into verses and choruses. (Even that facility with musical structure is something I find myself envying.) Beauchemin, who by the way is a distant cousin of fellow-AuthorsAloud-contributor Yves Beauchemin, gives us more great insights into the writing of his novel, and a terrific reading, here. Enjoy.

Despite my adding a couple of new readings to the AuthorsAloud collection recently, it’s been a while since I posted in this space. My reason, or excuse, is that I was looking for a theme, something that linked our new authors together. I think I’ve found it.
The commonality shared by the three newest contributors to AuthorsAloud — Farzana Doctor, Jessica Hiemstra and Shari Lapeña — is the breadth of life experience that they bring to their work. Not to say these are women who’ve lived a long time; they’re all quite young. But they’ve lived working lives beyond the keyboard or the pen, which isn’t something every writer can say.
Farzana Doctor, who gives us a reading from her newest novel, Six Metres of Pavement, has another existence as a psychotherapist, working with clients across a broad range of issues, from trauma to drug addiction to gender identity. She sees the stuff of authorial exploration every day, up close.
Jessica Hiemstra is a poet (reading here) who brings to her writing an eye developed by her own successful career as a visual artist, not to mention the years she has spent in lands most of us would consider exotic, including Sierra Leone and Melbourne, Australia.
And Shari Lapeña, the author of the novel Happiness Economics (reading here) has brought the experiences gained as a teacher and a lawyer to the fictional lives she creates.
Each of these writers has given us something true and real in their written work, and in the readings they’ve contributed here. I’m not going to say that it’s their life experience that makes the difference — there are no absolutes in art — but it’s at least as good as an MFA.

I met Sandra Ridley about a year ago during a book tour. The hospitality suites of literary festivals hold all sorts of surprises and Sandra was one. She was charming, smart and wry, but the surprise came later when I learned she was a poet. Sandra Ridley doesn’t like to brag. In fact she’s described herself elsewhere as “introverted.” But her light is now truly shining out from under the covers. She won a Saskatchewan Book Award for her 2010 collection, Fallout, and now her newest collection is destined to bring her more attention. As she explains here in her insight recording, Post-Apothecary was inspired by a visit to a tuberculosis sanitarium, and it exemplifies Sandra’s love of word sounds and precise imagery. Many of the poems have the fragile intricacy of watch works. It’s a pleasure to hear her read and I’m delighted that Sandra has contributed her voice to AuthorsAloud.
TC

Julie Wilson, known as @BookMadam on Twitter, contacted me recently because she saw us as aural kindred spirits. Recently on her blog, Juilie began posting recordings of authors reading recipes, which is pure fun (I’ve contributed a reading for “Cranberry-Orange Relish” by John Engels). And she had the great idea of getting together, textually, for a chat about AuthorsAloud, and about author readings in general. She posted the result, which includes a nostalgic riff on PopRocks (remember those?), on the terrific website Canadian Bookshelf, here.