Featuring Niloufar-Lily Soltani, Danila Botha, Donald Bourque, and Trena Christie-MacEachern
Why do your favourite Canadian authors write the books they write? Let’s find out in this exclusive feature here at The Miramichi Reader.
Niloufar-Lily Soltani, author of Zulaikha (Inanna, 2023)
I was born in Abadan, a tropical port in south Iran. We moved to Tehran when I was only two years old, but my mother was so attached to her family, and we spent many holidays there. I lived in Abadan in 1980 for a year before the Iran and Iraq war. Afterwards, we never returned to Khuzestan, but the palm trees, humidity, the smell of jasmine, the Karun River, the boats and the Arabic and Bandari songs marked the beginning of a journey that would later shape the narrative of my novel, Zulaikha.
When I went to school in Tehran, I felt the difference between my family’s culture and the others. “Oh, what is that you are eating?” A classmate would ask if they saw an Okra dish or smelled different spices. Sometimes, our Khuzestan province dialect sounded funny, and my family and I tried to diminish our accent and speak Farsi like people in Tehran would. Then, when I was in Abadan, I felt the difference between classes; how the senior Oil Company staff had allowances, elegant furniture and gardens versus the lifestyle of the Oil Company’s workers.
Then life happened, and I became an Iranian Canadian. And the first question I received from people around me was where I was from. Deep inside, I wanted to tell everyone I was from a part of Iran you may not know about. A part of Iran that went through a war and invasion and then became a wreck no one wanted to live in until in the past decade when life finally returned to it. Who did I share this with? Of course, as young as she was, my daughter was my only friend in those first years. She was growing up in Canada, and I wanted her to know who her parents were, how our lives changed because of where we belonged and even how our ancestors lived.
I left both Abadan and Tehran, and my heart, like the Karun River, was bruised in each of those places, but without those bruises, I wouldn’t be who I became, who my daughter became. We both overcame a lot of ordeals together. Navigating my past while adapting to my new home, I wrote Zulaikha in a quest for beauty and forgiveness.
Niloufar-Lily Soltani is a fiction writer, poet, and translator based in Vancouver. She is a graduate of the Humber College creative writing program. Zulaikha is her debut novel.
Danila Botha, Author of Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (Guernica, April 1, 2024)
When I set out to write this collection of short stories, I didn’t have a clear plan or unifying theme, the way I did with my last collection, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known. With that book, I knew I wanted to focus on relationships, from beginning to end, and I knew I wanted to write with as much emotional depth as possible.
Short fiction is my favourite, both to write and to read. I’m always writing it, reading it, and thinking about it. I find it so satisfying and exciting. I love the economy of the form and the challenge of saying so much in such a small space. This time, when I was starting to collect stories for Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness, my earliest stories included Sometimes I Like To Shoot Kids (which is about a photographer), Aloha State (which is about a woman who had a miscarriage, and the subsequent tension in her marriage) and All Good Things Take Time. Originally, this last one was part of a chapter in my upcoming novel, A Place for People Like Us, which will be published in 2025 with Guernica Editions. Elyse Friedman (who writes incredible novels and incredible short fiction) did a manuscript consultation for me and suggested that I take out a few parts but save them for something else. I had never tried to repurpose a chapter in a novel as a short story, but I was happy that I got to write more short fiction, and that I got to salvage it. All Good Things Take Time is about a woman who goes to great lengths to fake a pregnancy, and it was some of the strangest research I’ve ever done.
Not long afterwards, I found myself writing stories like Black Market Encounters (about a group of women who are tricked into divulging things that they don’t want to admit) or women who defended internalized misogyny (Always An Angel Never a God, The Best Guy I’ve Ever Known) and I realized how much I love writing complex women, the more complicated in every way, the better. I love exploring people’s motivations and finding compassion and reserving judgment for people who have very different views. I actually enjoyed seeing how far the characters took things.
Being Jewish and identity and displacement, and how one defines oneself were big themes too. There are stories about reconciling an Orthodox Jewish upbringing with discovering one’s true sexuality (Soulmates) stories about reconciling being an artist with a family’s perception of that (Don’t Look Back) stories about the Holocaust, from the families who are the next generation (Dark and Lilac Fairies, Able to Pass) to the survivors themselves (Proteksiye and Mazel, From the Belly of the Whale) It was also really interesting to write about people who’ve received almost mythological status in Jewish culture, like Anne Frank, to envision a different life for her, and to see how the younger generation reconciles her story with life today (Like An Alligator Eyeing a Small Fish)
There are stories about close friendship, like Love Me Til I’m Me Again (which was named after some installation art near the Galleria Mall in Toronto) and the loss of it, like in May the Bridges You’ve Burned Light Your Way, All the Lives that Could Have Been and Happiness contained in a single bite.
The title story, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness was the one I finished last (which was the same with the title story in my last collection) but I loved writing it, and I knew it was the title story when it was finished. It was really fun combining writing about having Rheumatoid Arthritis (which I have in real life) with struggling to be creative and productive at the same time, and imagining Leonard Cohen as an art store angel (I’m a huge fan of his, so I really enjoyed envisioning that and doing a deep dive into 90’s culture)
I’m so grateful to my publisher and editor Michael Mirolla, for being so patient and supportive as the collection’s length tripled, and to the whole Guernica Editions team for being so amazing to work with.
Danila Botha is the author of three short story collections, Got No Secrets and For All the Men (and Some of the Women I’ve Known) which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award. Her new collection, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness will be published in April 2024 by Guernica Editions.
She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much on the Inside which was recently optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place for People Like Us will be published by Guernica in 2025. She is part of the faculty at Humber School for Writers and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She just completed writing and illustrating her first graphic novel, Call Me Vidal.
Donald Bourque, author of The Willow’s Wake Trilogy (Friesen Press)
What do you get when a science fiction fan writes Young Adult Fantasy? The Willow’s Wake Trilogy.
In the first volume, Willow Awakened, Ascended, Avenged, we address inter-species conflicts. The real-world issue of racism (speciesism) begins with a young female main character, Willow, who is bullied for being different from other wood sprites. Her story continues when she is captured by night elves and learns more about herself and fighting for equality before uniting the two species against an external threat.
The Grand Chieftain is the spin-off sequel where we move the action across the river dividing the continent, with the main character, Garnidel, and his species of forest elves, fending off colonialism by encroaching humans. Circumstances force Garnidel to grow quickly into his leadership role, and the humans are relentless in their attacks.
Finally, in The High Priestess, we gain perspectives of humans who were surprised to learn these other races exist, and the main character, Lauren, is dispatched with her superior knowledge of the myths concerning these fae. Supported by her unconventional travel companion, a page named Daudra whose behaviours are not the standard in the Court of Mystics, the situation unfolds. What begins as a stalemate to be broken becomes a fight against genocide and conflict of religious views.
Don Bourque was born and raised in Southeastern NB where he again makes his home. Retired in both civilian and military life, Don served for 37 years in the Army Reserve while working in the areas of corrections, education and mental health. The combination of work experiences, including an operational tour in Afghanistan in 2003, informs his writing today.
Among the various boards and associations Don is involved with, he has joined the Board of Directors at the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, where he advocates for new, local authors and those established.
Trena Christie-MacEachern, Author of The Light of Day (Moose House Publications, Oct. 31 2023)
My novel, The Light of Day, is about a young girl, Maggie MacDonald, and the tragic circumstances that befall her in 1950s Cape Breton. She must travel a great distance, not just to Ontario and Boston, but inside herself, to understand her life, her father and her dreams.
When my friend and cousin Melinda MacDonald went through a life-altering event, a cancer diagnosis, she told me about her experience with Reiki Therapy to help with her healing. Although skeptical, she said it tapped into her creative juices. She is a painter and artist. I, a writer and open to new things, decided to give it a try myself.
The first session was underwhelming, to say the least, but I said I would commit to the three sessions to give it a fair try.
The second session hit on something that, to this day, I can’t fully understand. Ten minutes into the session, in the darkened room with soft music playing in the background, I envisioned an old house on a hill and a young girl inside it. Her whole story unfolded as I lay on that table, and I began bawling like a baby.
Did the instructor pass something to me from her own life experiences or did she release some trapped energy from inside me? Whichever, this is where Maggie’s story began.
Once the session was over, I started writing the story in my head on the hour-long drive home, still red-eyed and red-faced from crying. Bizarre, I know, but that’s where this story came from.
Trena Christie-MacEachern is a fiction writer, a wannabe gardener, and loves Halloween. She is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia along with two writing groups. Her short stories have appeared in newspapers, literary magazines, and anthologies. Her debut novel, The Light of Day, was released in November 2023 by Moose House Publications and her second novel, Karma, will be released in 2024. She lives in Unamak’i, Cape Breton, in the village of Judique with her husband, Glen, and their Border Collie, Lucy.