Saleema Nawaz has published fiction in Prairie Fire, Grain, The New Quarterly, and PRISM International, and she is an alumnus of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She studied creative writing at the University of Manitoba, where her M.A. thesis received the inaugural Robert Kroetsch Award for Best Creative Thesis. Some of that work appears in her new debut collection of short fiction, Mother Superior (Freehand). Warren Cariou writes that “her observations are pitch-perfect, and her prose scintillates.”
Saleema Nawaz was born in Ottawa and lives now in Montreal where she is at work on her first novel.
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1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
To be honest, I haven't done much performance as a writer. As of right now, I've only read for an audience four times, though that number will have doubled by the time I get to Winnipeg. By then, I might have more of a handle on what I can get out of it — and, with any luck, what I can bring to it! In general, though, I find it helpful to read my writing aloud: I can often be found muttering sentences in front of my computer to see if they have the right rhythm.
2) What do you want people to know about Mother Superior?
Well, without getting into the stories, I can say with great enthusiasm and complete modesty that, regardless of the contents, it's a beautiful object. Gorgeous cover, lovely fonts, guaranteed to attract notice on your bookshelves and earn the envy and esteem of your peers. Something in the fullness of its golden hue will even enhance the appearance of your other books, bringing them into an attractive harmony. (From below: See? Pretty!) Frankly speaking, it'll tie your whole bookcase together. Or maybe even the whole room — it's just that nice. But the contents, too, I think are pretty good.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I lived in Winnipeg for three years from 2002-2004, and about half of the stories in the book were written or started there. I moved to Winnipeg sight unseen, knowing almost nothing about it, and since then, I've developed rabid antennae for anyone uttering its name within a hundred yards. (More often, though, it seems like I'm the one talking about it.) It's a unique city. There's nothing like a Winnipeg winter — or spring! Or summer for that matter. And I miss my Winnipeg friends.
This will be my third time back since I moved to Montreal, and like the last trip, it will be much too short. I'm entertaining wildly unrealistic notions of what I can manage to squeeze into about a day and a half.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I'm just finishing Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a book most people I know read years and years ago and which is just as hilarious as I've been led to believe. I'm also reading Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon because I'm trying to become civilized and read more poetry. The last book I read and loved was The Darren Effect by Libby Creelman.
Right now I'm working on a novel based on the characters in "Bloodlines," one of the stories in Mother Superior, only picking up with them eighteen years later. I'm finding it exciting to work on something with such a sense of freedom as to length. (If you call 'sitting in front of the computer for hours on end' exciting ... as I do.)
5) Do you have any advice on writing good sex? (Or even bad sex?)
The Guardian book blog tackled this subject recently. And the novel excerpts on the shortlist for the Bad Sex Awards (discussed and available here) are also hilarious and instructive. The award was set up to discourage "unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels."
I'm no expert (sexpert?), but I think the old adage about writing holds true for writing sex: less is more. (Unlike sex itself, I might add.)
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Saleema Nawaz will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:
September 24 - Mainstage, with Mary Swan, Joan Thomas, and Miriam Toews.
September 24 - Campus Program, University of Manitoba
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