The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.
The Questionless Books Interview: Novelist, Reviewer, and Teacher Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
Submitted by gmurray on November 23, 2010 - 10:37am
Inspired by the Proust Questionnaire, The Questionless Books Interview gets a host of lit-types (authors, editors, publishers, publicists, designers, booksellerss, readers, bloggers, journalists, etc.) to finish a bunch of statements about the state of literature and the "future of books".
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's first book of fiction, Way Up (2003) received a Danuta Gleed Award and was a finalist for the Relit Award. The Nettle Spinner was short-listed for The Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel award and was also named a best of 2005 by January magazine. Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the former fiction editor of The Literary Review of Canada, and has also worked as a tree-planter, a lumberjack, and a baker. Her reviews have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Toronto Star and The National Post. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and through the New York Times online learning, and is the former Magazine Editor for Bookninja.com.
Kathryn's Books:
Perfecting
The Nettle Spinner
Way Up
Kathryn's Links:
I am... Kathryn
I am known to... write weird
I do this in... spite of my better instinct
I do this because... when I go down the well, this is the sludge that most interests me
I do this when I... start nightmare cycles
The way I do this is... varied and private
At its core, a Writer is... dealing in truthiness
As opposed to an Author, who is... a performing monkey
A Writer is responsible for... the itinerant souls of now, before and after. Not getting it right but trying to at least get it
As opposed to an Author, who is responsible for... a book
At its core, Publishing is... only publishing
As opposed to Editing, which is... only editing
A Publisher should always... respect authors
As opposed to an Editor, who should always... respect the work
A Manuscript that's ready to be read by others is... often not
As opposed to a Book that's ready to be read by others, which is... often, at least, beautiful
A Manuscript should always... be right justified
As opposed to a Book, which should always... be just
At its core, Bookselling is... a diminishing occupation
As opposed to Book Marketing, which is... commensurately increasing
The smallest unit of narrative is... space plus time
To be a Book a thing must be... inside and also outside its thingness
The biggest reason to be scared of the future is... its fleeting nature
The biggest reason to anticipate the future is... its infinite vastness
In the future we will all... know more
At his/her core, a Reader is... truly human.
