Interview with

Gloria Sawai
Canadian Women Reading and Writing
February 5, 2009

Gloria Sawai was raised in Saskatchewan and Alberta and
earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of
Montana. She has taught creative writing at the Banff School
of Fine Arts, the Saskatchewan School of the Arts, and Grant
MacEwan University in Edmonton. Her short fiction has been
published in anthologies in Canada, the U.S., England, Denmark, Mexico and Japan. Her collection of short stories, A Song
for Nettie Johnson (2001), won numerous Awards including the
Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Danuta Gleed Award
for the Best First Book of Short Fiction and the Henry Kreisel
Award for Best First Book. After living in the U.S., Japan and
other parts of Canada, Gloria Sawai now makes her home in
Edmonton.

written by Ross Annett, an Albertan writer. I was so amazed by
that book, I thought it was so wonderful. I don’t know, it just
stuck with me—the landscape, the dust, the weeds, the thistles.
I picked it up as an adult, recently, and looked at it again and I
thought, “I wonder why I thought that about it!” (Laughter)
CanWWR (Clare): That’s a sad moment.
G.S.: Yes, it was sad to look at it again and see that I didn’t have
the same response.
CanWWR (Clare): Have you had the opposite experience at
all, books that you’ve gone back to and they still have the same
spell over you?

We had the opportunity to interview Gloria Sawai (G.S.) on
February 11, 2009, just after she gave a Brown Bag Lunch reading at the Canadian Literature Centre (www.arts.ualberta.ca/clc)
at the University of Alberta.

G.S.: Not with childhood books. I remember receiving Lassie
Come Home for Christmas when I was in grade school, and I
thought that was amazing. I read the whole thing on Christmas
Day, I think. But we were limited. I was not raised in a scholarly home. My father was a preacher, so there was a lot of Bible
stuff. But there are a lot of pretty good stories in the Bible, and
my dad was a really good story-teller. But other than that, there
was a lack there. I feel a real lack in my cultural education.
That’s it about the childhood stuff, really.

CanWWR (Patricia): Thank you for being part of this interview.
We’re really concerned with the connections between your reading and writing.
CanWWR (Clare): So we thought we’d start by getting some
idea of what kind of reading you did as a child. What kind of
genres or writers were you attracted to, and were there limits on
that or was it wide open?

CanWWR (Devorah): Was there a moment when you knew you
wanted to be a writer, or did you always write? And the other
way I like to think of the question is, sometimes people just accidentally become writers, and sometimes they can’t live without it, they have to write all the time. So was there any specific
influence or anything that made you decide to start writing?

G.S.: I remember that at the school I went to in Saskatchewan
our library was a shelf at the back of the room and it had an
encyclopedia on it, it had the play A Doll’s House by Ibsen, and
a few others. There were about five books, and that’s all it was.
CanWWR (Clare): So, limited.

G.S.: Well, I liked writing in school. I began a novel when I
was in grade 5. I still remember the first line: “It was midnight
in the slums of New York. What a dark, cold midnight it was.”
(Laughter)

G.S.: Yes. What did I read as a child? I really liked the Anne of
Green Gables books; I read all of them. I read good, proper, nice
books. I remember, as a high school student, joining the “Book
of the Month Club” and getting some books in the mail. My
mother looked at them, and she got so mad. She deemed them
to be “inappropriate.” She mailed them all back. It was bad. She
thought they were obscene. I remember receiving a book when
I was in early high school called Especially Babe, and it was

CanWWR (Clare): Wow, what a great opening line.
G.S.: I thought that was pretty good for grade 5.

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CanWWR (Patricia): In Saskatchewan! (Laughter)

University of Calgary. But then when you’re teaching, you’re
not writing. So I didn’t do much of that at all. Then I was here
and I was teaching English at Grant McEwan, and writing on
the side, on weekends and holidays. I wrote a few stories and
they were published. Then I went down to Banff and studied
and wrote. And I fooled around with it a lot. I fooled around all
those years, here and there, writing, publishing. In 1996 I had
a massive heart attack. I’d been teaching at Grant McEwan. I
knew it was no good because I was uptight and tense, I hated
my job, but I felt I needed money. I recovered, and was healthy,
but I didn’t go back teaching. So a friend of mine said, “Well,
maybe you’ll finally get your act together and start writing.”
And I did. And that’s when I wrote most of this book that was
published.

G.S.: But then I became an English teacher. I taught grammar,
sentence structure. I don’t know, I’m really good at sentences
now. I don’t think anybody writes a better sentence than I
do, actually. But back to your question, was there any pivotal
moment? Yes. When I was married I had two children, and I
was totally depressed and just sat and looked at the wall. My
husband was an artist and he said, “If you don’t do what you
are meant to do, and want to do, if that doesn’t work out for
you, you’re going to get sick.” So he suggested that I actually
go to school, that I work on an MFA degree in writing. He felt
otherwise I wouldn’t do it. And I wanted to do it. Depression
was the thing, though. But school seemed like a really exciting
possibility. So I applied to graduate studies at the University of
Montana. I had to send in a few samples of work and I sent a
couple of poems. And I got a letter back saying that I was not
accepted so I felt terrible about that. My husband was a university professor, so he knew how the system worked, and he said,
“Do you want to do this or not? Do you really want to do this?”
And I said, “Yes, I really do.” And he said, “Well then you’ll do
it.” And we drove down to Montana and had an interview with
the head of the writing department and I was in.

CanWWR (Patricia): About your writing process—once you
devoted youself to it full-time, Gloria—do you have a certain
schedule when you write? Do you read as you write, do you use
reading to kind of prompt you to write? Do you write only in the
morning, do you write throughout the day, is the evening better
for you? What’s your writing process like?
G.S.: It’s spotty. (Laughter)

CanWWR (Clare): It must have been a good interview.

CanWWR (Patricia): And irregular?

G.S.: (Laughter) Well, it was just amazing that you could do
that.

G.S.: And irregular. But I like the morning best. That always
works best for me. Just get a couple of hours or three in the
morning and then I feel good. Lately there’s been some kind of
resistance to that and I have to take a look at that. It’s like trying
to drive a car with the brakes on. What is the resistance to me
finishing this novel I’ve started? What bothers me is that I can’t
seem to let it go but at the same time, it’s not going forward.
And I remember John Irving once said, “What is the difference
between a professional writer and a non-professional? It’s not
writing more than anyone else, and it’s not writing better than
anyone else. It’s finishing what you start.” And I think that’s
never left me and I’ve got this manuscipt in front of me and I
don’t want to finish it, you know, but I’d really disappoint John
if I stopped now and let it go. (Laughter) He wrote this beautiful
story, [The World According to Garp 1978], about a transvestite
and wrestling—a very wild story.

CanWWR (Patricia): Persistence.
G.S.: Persistence. So then I was in that program for two full
years and three full summers, and I loved it. It was just so good.
We just had little writing groups, informal groups. And that’s
when I realized I had a passion for this. And I did a lot of work.
And it was wonderful to do that work. I loved the courses. I was
in my 40s, early 40s, and when there was some holiday or class
was cancelled, I got irritated. (Laughter)
CanWWR (Clare): That’s a good sign.
G.S.: I didn’t want to stay home in bed when I could be studying
Chinese poetry.

CanWWR (Patricia): So, your schedule is basically morning.
And how are you dealing with this block right now, Gloria?

CanWWR (Patricia): Were you actually in Missoula? Oh, that’s
a great city.

G.S.: Not well.

G.S.: Have you been to Missoula?

CanWWR (Patricia): So it’s just frustrating you.

CanWWR (Patricia): Yes, I like it a lot. The downtown theatre,
The Alma? Is it called The Alma? I love it.
CanWWR (Devorah): I have a follow-up question. When you
left that program, did you find it difficult to keep writing?

G.S.: Yes. However, I do try to write some lines and get something down on paper.
CanWWR (Patricia): You don’t go to anything else so that
maybe by diverting your attention you can come back to this,

G.S.: Yes. I came home and I got a job teaching writing at the
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renewed?

CanWWR (Amy): Right. Albertan, even.

G.S.: Well I have gone to something else because I’ve gotten a
commission to write something here or there, which I’ve done.
And then I’ve come back to this. Actually, I think I’m working
on this because I applied for a grant and I needed to have an idea
before I got the grant. And I thought of this great idea to get the
money and I got the money. And I remember going to a therapist about it, this touch therapist, and she said, “Give the money
back.” I didn’t but it’s an albatross on my neck, you know, to
have that money and to think I have to do this thing that I just
made up to get the money. (Laughter) But, yes, I write in the
morning and I like to get together with other writers around me.
We used to get together in a little group and read sometimes to
each other. We don’t do that anymore. You know, I look at that
novel that I don’t like and don’t want to finish and I look at parts
of it and I think, “This is really good. I forgot how good this was
right here.” So that gives me a little encouragement to finish the
thing. Also the fact that my idea for the project originally must
have come from some place.

G.S.: Albertan. Ross Annett. And, in fact, I got a newer copy—it
was reproduced—of Ross Annett’s book and there’s a long foreword in it by Rudy Wiebe. And he picks up on the significance
of the book, so that was interesting. So a lot of that is from when
I went down to Montana and I got in touch with all these American books, including John Updike. But in Canada, of course I
picked up Alice Munro. My best friend is just a fanatic over her
work and I read her work and I think it’s wonderful. That’s the
short story genre. I also like Alistair MacLeod. I think he’s masterful and I learn from him because his scenes are just magical, I
think. I love Canadian writers. I love Fred Stenson who lives in
Calgary. I like him as a person and I like his writing and I think
he gets better and better and he really does it consistently. I love
Tim Bowling, who lives in Edmonton. He gave a reading once
that I was at. It was for his non-fiction book and I started to cry
in the middle of his reading. It was so moving; I’d never done
that. Guy Vanderhaeghe, I like him. I like Margaret Atwood too.
Her novels are very readable. She’s a good story-teller.

CanWWR (Patricia): Maybe it just needs more time to . . .

CanWWR (Patricia): Do you prefer her as a novelist or as a
poet? Does it matter?

G.S.: Time! I’ve been at it for six years! (Laughter)
CanWWR (Patricia): Ok, I’ll shut my mouth. We’ll edit that out.
(Laughter)

G.S.: Novelist, I think. I don’t read much poetry so I don’t have
much to say about that. I don’t decide, “Ok, I’m just going to
read poetry this afternoon,” and pick up a poetry book. Oh, I
like that guy who doesn’t get much credit. He wrote the trilogy.
He’s dead. His books are good too but he’s criticized because
they say he’s trying to sound like Charles Dickens.

G.S.: No, that’s actually a good thing to ask. It’s just that I don’t
have a good answer.
CanWWR (Amy): Ok, well we’re going to go back to reading
again. We started out with what you read as a child, we’d also
like to know a little bit about what you read now. Are there
specific authors, genres? Do you read specifcally men, specifically women, do you care? Also, we are interested in Canadian
writing so if you have thoughts or comments on what there is to
read in Canada, we’re interested in that.

CanWWR (Devorah): The Deptford Trilogy?
CanWWR (Patricia): Oh, Robertson Davies?
G.S.: Yes! Robertson Davies. I really enjoyed reading his stuff.
And I liked The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. I think
those are pretty wonderful writers, actually. Canadian short
story writers too—I think Canadians are so good at short stories.

G.S.: Actually, I read what I want to read and it can come from
any country and it can come from men or women and it really
doesn’t make much difference to me. I remember the first novel
that really stunned me, just knocked my socks off was One
Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Márquez. What happened
in that reading is I thought, “My goodness, you can do anything
you want.” You can do anything you want if you can make it
right, make it real to the reader. And that liberated me a great
deal to do some odd things in my writing. And The Horse’s
Mouth, I remember that was a wonderful book.

CanWWR (Patricia): Well Alice Munro is definitely at the top of
the field and she’s internationally acclaimed.
G.S.: Yes. She is absolutely wonderful and I don’t know how
she does it. It looks like it’s totally effortless and she’s just
casually telling you something over the kitchen table and then
there’s this amazing story underneath. Isn’t it amazing?
CanWWR (Patricia): Yes.
CanWWR (Amy): So then you definitely do take from what
you’re reading, when you can, with your writing? You like to
read things that inspire you?

CanWWR (Patricia): By Joyce Cary.
G.S.: Yes. These are not Canadians but these are the ones that
got me going. The very first book though, as I said, when I was
in grade school, was Canadian.

G.S.: Yes, I think so. But I’m not very picky. If there’s some
book hanging around, there it is. I haven’t decided, “Ok, I’m
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going to search out this particular writer.” I think I’ve read The
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky about three times
and I’ve got this worn copy that I still have and I might read
again. A friend of mine just gave me War and Peace. I remember
reading that long, long ago but I don’t think I’m going to read
that again.

for her grandson. It is just probably one of the most beautiful
stories I have ever read—a wonderful story. I tend to use the
same things that I love over and over, so I’m not as adventurous in trying new things in teaching. And I don’t ever get tired
of the stuff, ever. I’m just happy with it. There’s a little sketch
called “Breakfast” by John Steinbeck and I read that every year
because it’s so beautiful.

CanWWR (Amy): Once was enough? (Laughter)

CanWWR (Devorah): I have a question that actually goes back
to your reading. I was just wondering, in short stories like the
story you read today, “The Mother,” I felt like there was this
whole undercurrent of shame. There was shame with the cat and
there was shame with her developing but you leave it out, right?

G.S.: Oh, Chekhov’s short stories are wonderful. I think he’s a
master.
CanWWR (Amy): Well, we do like to ask that question but we
find it interesting that mostly people respond either, “I don’t
care, I read anything” or they respond, “I do everything I can to
avoid reading Canadian literature.”

G.S.: Well I don’t want to say the words. It should be shown
through what’s happening.

G.S.: Somebody says that?!

CanWWR (Devorah): Right. Does that happen naturally when
you write a story? Does it just kind of come out or do you purposely choose which sections to not mention?

CanWWR (Amy): We did a survey of some undergraduate and
graduate students here and we got that response quite a lot. “I
don’t read Canadian literature; I only read it because I had to in
university or high school.”

G.S.: You don’t want to just state “This is about shame.” If
you did, then why write a story and not just an abstract thesis.
(Laughter)

G.S.: Hmm. What do they prefer?

CanWWR (Devorah): But do you set out saying “This is going
to be an undertone,” or does it just come out on its own?

CanWWR (Amy): I think part of the problem is that some
people don’t realize that the Canadian canon has exploded. It’s
not just Atwood and Laurence anymore. There’s a lot of other
stuff to read. And they probably would pick up a Canadian book
without even realizing it’s Canadian.

G.S.: No. I don’t start out by thinking, “This will be the undertone,” or “This has that meaning.” It happens sometimes without
my will. Like this girl who is so shamed by her father—what
would a person like that do next? How is she going to handle
her life? I think one thing I did consciously try—but I don’t
think anybody picks it up—is that I have her looking at the
snow falling down at the beginning of the story and she compares it to refugees looking for a place to live and a warm house
and tea and putting their babies to bed. And the picture of that
next to that little cat at the end, the conflict there. At that point I
think “Oh, I hope somebody sees the bigger picture, the political picture of displacement.” What I like about this particular
response is that the girl has this huge lie she creates to cover up
the deed—big barn, hay, milk, other cats. So then I hope people
think more about the political meaning. This is what’s happening, and this is the lie we tell and it’s awful.

G.S.: One thing I like about reading Canadian—and if you’re
writing in Canada—is that you get to know these people who
are writing and it’s just a really interesting community.
CanWWR (Patricia): Is there an Edmonton community of writers?
G.S.: There’s some, but they’re not close-knit. We don’t get
together or anything. I like that kind of community but lately
I’ve been sort of out of it. I’m not in the zone; I’m not in the
groove. I have been separate, somewhat. When I was teaching creative writing at Grant MacEwan, writing the short story,
one of the models I used all the time was “Misery” by Anton
Chekhov. If you look at it you could say it’s sort of sentimental but I just think it’s wonderful for teaching what you can do
with a conflict. And the landscape is gorgeous. And the sentiments—there’s a line in there when he’s describing the sorrow
of the old man who lost his son and he says if the sorrow covers
the whole world you couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t show even if
you lit a candle and put it right up to it, you still couldn’t see
it. It’s an image that I can’t get out of my mind. Another short
story I used a lot is “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty. It’s about
an old lady who takes a journey into town to get some medicine

CanWWR (Amy): Thank you so much for this interview, Gloria.
G.S.: You are so welcome.

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