Featuring Lindsay Zier-Vogel, Martha Bátiz, Saad Omar Khan, and Christy Climenhage
Lindsay Zier-Vogel, author of The Fun Times Brigade (Book*hug, May 2025)
I used to think that I start writing a book with a character, but I’ve realized that even before the characters emerge, I start with ideas I’m interested in. For The Fun Times Brigade, I was interested in exploring early motherhood, and the subsequent loss of one’s identity, grief, and definitions of artistic success. During the window when I couldn’t stop thinking about this collection of ideas, it also happened to be Sharon and Bram’s farewell tour, so they were all over the radio, and I found myself singing “Skinamarink” as I was swimming in the very early mornings before my family was up. It was in the pool that The Fun Times Brigade arrived, not quite fully formed, but mid-length, I knew that I wanted to explore the early days of motherhood, losing one’s identity, all-consuming loss, and definitions of artistic success through the lens of a children’s musician.
I had a picture book deal before I had my first novel deal, and when I’d tell people that I had a book deal, they’d light up, and when I told them it was for a picture book, there’d be a visible moment of disappointment—like I wasn’t a “real” writer. It was a fascinating experience and it made me want to explore what makes an artist “successful”. Can artists who create solely for kids still be considered successful in our culture? Of course my answer is yes, but I wanted to explore the tension between external and internal definitions of artistic success in a longform narrative.
I didn’t have a novel out when I had my first child, and I was terrified that having a baby would ruin my (barely existent) writing career (Spoiler alert, it didn’t!). But I wanted to push that idea even further in this book, so I made Amy a touring musician, because if there’s one thing I can’t imagine it’s being on the road with an infant. I also wanted to explore those bewildering, devastating, and sleep-deprived early days of motherhood before I got too far away from them.
One thing I didn’t anticipate when I had this collection of ideas was how much research I was going to have to do to make the world of children’s music (and indie music) come alive. I really love research, and was able to interview incredible musicians and producers (and mathematicians!), including Fred Penner, Sharon and Bram (of Sharon, Lois & Bram fame), and my producer/drummer friend, Joshua Van Tassel. These interviews were definitely a highlight of my book writing process and were invaluable in making Amy’s world come alive.
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LINDSAY ZIER-VOGEL is a Toronto-based author and the creator of the internationally beloved Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance, Zier-Vogel received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia, and her first picture book, Dear Street was a Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for a Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award in 2024. The Fun Times Brigade is her second novel.
Martha Bátiz, author of A Daughter’s Place (House of Anansi Press, May 2025)
Let me begin by saying that I never imagined that I would write a novel about the only daughter of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Why? Because Don Quixote is such an important, almost sacred book in the Spanish language, and Cervantes is our Shakespeare, so one always approaches them with care, or observes them from afar in awe and adoration. What business would a Mexican-Canadian author like me have in approaching this subject, and in English, no less? None, I would have thought, except that before this, no one had penned a novel about Cervantes’ daughter, niece, sisters, and wife together and explored the strong influence they had on him, and the many ways in which they supported his literary career. And theirs is a story that had to be written, simply because it’s so interesting! Now, as someone born in the land that used to be called the New Spain, did I even have the right to attempt this? Am I crossing some kind of line? This is a whole other subject which remains to be seen, but let me add that every page was written from a place of love and admiration for Cervantes himself, of compassion and understanding for the challenges these women faced, and of huge respect for Spain, a country where I’ve always felt at home.
It all began when I was working on my doctoral dissertation and I came across information having to do with Isabel de Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes’ illegitimate (and only) daughter. The accounts I found stated that she and her father had a tumultuous relationship, and most talked about her with contempt, referring to her as an ingrate with loose morals who made her father’s life impossible in the end. Loose morality ran in the family, if you believe those accounts, as Cervantes’ sisters were accused of living a licentious life at a time when moral rules were very strict –or at least, claimed to be. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about Isabel, which led me to learning more about her aunts, and her cousin, and soon I found myself tangled in the family’s web. What I discovered through my research, and the puzzle pieces I managed to connect with the help of my own imagination, were a novel begging to be written. And I simply couldn’t resist.
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MARTHA BÁTIZ is an award-winning writer, translator, and professor of creative writing and Spanish language and literature. She is the author of five books, including the short story collections No Stars in the Sky and Plaza Requiem (winner of an International Latino Book Award), as well as the novella Boca de lobo / Damiana’s Reprieve (winner of the Casa de Teatro Prize). Born and raised in Mexico City, she now lives in Toronto. A Daughter’s Place is her first novel.
Saad Omar Khan, author of Drinking the Ocean (Wolsak and Wynn, May 2025)
Part of the genesis of writing Drinking the Ocean was to document a dark and challenging time in my life. While not exactly therapeutic, it was an exercise in validating the pain of this past by reifying my memories in narrative form. In its own way, writing was a form of control, a method of taming time.
Apart from its personal dimensions, the themes of Drinking the Ocean—divine versus worldly love, how religious devotion rises and falls, the dissonance between one’s ideals and reality—have been with me for years. It was important for me to make real these high-minded concepts through specifically Muslim characters, where the focus would be centred on their inner, emotional selves. The lives of Muslims in the West are too often situated solely around the multiple lenses of geopolitics, migration, racism, and integration. Perhaps unconsciously, the frustration around this discourse created a sense of urgency in wanting to write Muslim characters who had to contend with matters of the heart above everything else, including politics. These interior matters of the heart were something that became more apparent as I edited and re-wrote the novel. The person you are at the start of writing a novel isn’t always the same as the one who sees the novel through its completion. In the process of writing this book, Drinking the Ocean became a spiritual learning opportunity of sorts. The characters in this novel feel grief and profound hurt, yet also have a great capacity for love, compassion, and graciousness. It was only upon looking back at these characters that I was able to prove to myself that, despite the sadness and emptiness of my past, the values they upheld still existed within me. At the risk of sounding trite, I owe these fictional creations of mine my gratitude, with the hope that I can honour the essence of their spirit, and that the reader can share in my immense affection for them.
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Saad Omar Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea before immigrating to Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies (University of Toronto) where he was a finalist for the Random House Creative Writing Award (2010 and 2011) and for the Marina Nemat Award (2012). In 2019, he was longlisted for the Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications.
Christy Climenhage, author of The Midnight Project (Wolsak and Wynn, May 2025)
Why did I write this book? Short answer: Because it was time.
I decided I would be a novelist around the age of five, when I started reading chapter books. Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web… I was hooked, and I knew this was what I wanted to do. And then I grew up, always writing something but never publishing. My life choices meandered and I did a bunch of other things: grad school, careers. When the pandemic hit, I was ripe for personal revelation. And I asked myself a serious question: was I ever going to write and publish that story that had been kicking around my head for years? Or should I stop saying I would? There is never a good time to sit down and write a novel, but I scheduled the hours, the word count and undertook to get the thing out of my head. That thing is The Midnight Project.
Of course, the real question is why this book.
And the answer to that is: my characters were kicking around my head, demanding to be written, against the backdrop of the awful premise that honey-bees were dying off around the world. Raina, a disgraced genetic engineer, was looking for a way back and a way forward. And of course, who doesn’t love a book with mad scientists at its heart? Imagine Dr. Frankenstein was a woman and had compassion for her creation. Imagine that same Dr. Frankenstein was under contract, subject to non-disclosure agreements and liability waivers, in a near future where corporate interests rule, billionaires wield extraordinary power and are driving the planet to extinction. Imagine Dr. Frankenstein had a best friend to share the burden of creation with, to share the excitement of the science. And their creations had dreams of their own.
Writing and re-writing throughout the pandemic I was struck by how bad things could get “out there” and we would just keep working, looking after people we love, and muddling through. As Raina just kept working, watching the bad news of the world scroll by, she found something in her relationships to those closest to her that sustained her. I’m fascinated by this complexity, by the necessity of living through trying times with dignity. It’s easy to forget that even in times of conflict and calamity, people experience joy, fall in love, have babies. They get up and go to work. That’s why I wrote this book.
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Christy Climenhage was born in southern Ontario, Canada, and currently lives in a forest north of Ottawa. In between, she has lived on four continents. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University in Political and Social Sciences, and Masters’ degrees from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (International Political Economy) and the College of Europe (European Politics and Administration). She loves writing science fiction that pushes the boundaries of our current society, politics and technology. When she is not writing, you can find her walking her dogs, hiking or cross-country skiing.
