Over the past decade, Canadian literature has pretty much been constantly on the verge of collapsing in on itself. As Tuscarora writer Alicia Elliott so aptly put it in a column for Open Book back in 2017, “it would seem that dissatisfaction with the state of CanLit, strangely enough, is the current state of CanLit.” This column followed an incident in which Steven Galloway, the former chair of the University of British Columbia’s creative writing program, was dismissed from his post due to allegations of assault, and many prominent Canadian authors put their support behind him. 

Since then, this perpetual state of dissatisfaction has only worsened. It seems that the defining feature of CanLit is to be mired in controversy. Select notes over the past decade include the identities of writers who had written extensively of being Indigenous, such as Gwen Benaway and Joseph Boyden, being called into question; the lucrative Griffin Poetry Prize causing uproar by nixing its prioritization of Canadian authors; Alice Munro being alleged to have been complicit in her husband’s abuse of her daughter; and the campaigns against the Giller Prize for the investment of its main sponsor, Scotiabank, in Elbit Systems—a defence contractor that supplies military equipment to Israel’s apartheid regime. (Note: the author of this piece has been publicly involved in the Giller Prize campaigns.)

Yet despite all this, CanLit continues, impossibly, to roll along—like a car whose engine clangs and whistles to high heaven, threatening to burst but continuing to fire regardless. Maybe this is because there is no singular engine powering what we call CanLit; that shorthand descriptor references an enormous range of persons, styles, presses and institutions, from tiny avant-garde publishers to behemoth international prizes. CanLit will never perish because it never really existed in the first place, except as a lazy way to pull together the diverse literary cultures of this vast country.

Maisonneuve spoke with four contemporary writers from across Canada for this article. These authors can’t be taken as representatives for that illusory singular engine called CanLit. What they are, instead, are authors who live in and write from different cities in Canada, and whose work has helped our literary culture earn greater acclaim on the international stage. 

Maisonneuve spoke with Fawn Parker, the Fredericton-based author of the novel What We Both Know, the poetry collection Soft Inheritance and the new novel Hi, It’s Me, which explores the complexities of grief; Toronto’s Marlowe Granados, whose writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and the Cut and who is the author of the glamorous breakout novel Happy Hour; Billy-Ray Belcourt, from the Driftpile Cree Nation and based in Vancouver, whose 2017 debut poetry collection This Wound is a World earned him the title of the youngest-ever winner of the Griffin ­Poetry Prize, and whose recent works include the short story collection Coexistence and the novel A Minor Chorus; and Heather O’Neill, the writer of such quintessential Montreal novels as Lullabies for Little Criminals and When We Lost Our Heads, whose new novel The Capital of Dreams is set in an imaginary gothic-fairytale country in Europe. These writers spoke about the ideal place to write in, which rules writers need to follow and which to break, and the best place in their cities to watch the sunset.

What were you listening to on repeat while working on your latest book? Does that sonic influence surface in the text at all?

Fawn Parker: I don’t write to music anymore, but I used to listen to a lot of dad rock. I did have this ­fantasy while writing Hi, It’s Me that I might play Todd ­Rundgren’s ­“Hello It’s Me” at the launch.

Marlowe Granados: I listened to so much disco, and it definitely does come up in [Happy Hour]. There’s something so glamorous about a woman singing about her failed or successful yearnings and still dancing through it all. Donna Summer, Candi Staton, Andrea True Connection. 

Billy-Ray Belcourt: A lot of Maggie Rogers; it’s hard to say if it surfaces or not. I’m sure in some subtle, ineluctable ways it does.

Heather O’Neill: For Children by Béla Bartók, which is a group of compositions he wrote for children to be able to play. I like the way children play music, sort of broken and badly and Brechtian, but there’s such innocence there. My main character [in The Capital of Dreams] is a young girl who plays the clarinet, and although she is ranked fifth in her class, she plays it through the war.

Where do you think the best place in the world to write would be? 

Parker: My favourite places to write are hotel rooms and airports. I’ve always wanted to write in Hydra, Greece like Leonard Cohen, but I don’t think it would do anything for my writing. It might make it worse.

Granados: Oh god, I don’t think anywhere is better or worse. I write from a foldable plastic table on a big PC in a freezing studio with a bunch of ceramicists. It’s your mind that travels! The more beautiful the place, the less I want to write.

Belcourt: My mom’s kitchen table. 

O’Neill: In the middle of a city, within walking distance of all-night convenience stores. Paris in the twenties. New York in the seventies. Montreal in the nineties. I did like the way I wrote in Dublin. There was a lightness to the words, as though my pen were being guided by fairies. There’s a magic in the air. I was recently in Louisiana and the swamps changed the way I wrote there. Every word was weighed down by the unburied dead. 

Do you think that writing is a solitary task, or a social one?

Parker: Both! I can’t often sit and write prose if other people are around, but I generate ideas when I’m out, talking, etc. I think a “good” writer is naturally curious about others.

Granados: I need a lot of talking with friends to synthesize my thoughts. I take to my desk in the day and go off into the night.

Belcourt: Literally solitary, conceptually social. 

O’Neill: It’s both. I am solitary, but the whole time, I am composing every novel as a love letter for readers. So it is, in that way, incredibly social. You are quiet in order to open yourself up to the world.

You meet someone who has, for undetermined reasons, never read a book, or even heard about the concept of a book, in their entire life. Which three books are you giving them? 

Parker: The collected stories of Amy Hempel, Joy ­Williams and Raymond Carver.

Belcourt: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, We the Animals by Justin Torres and Crush by Richard Siken.

O’Neill: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Jesus’ Son, Beloved. I think those three would give them an idea of what the poetry of books can do.

You can ask any writer in history, alive or dead, one question. Who do you single out, and what are you asking them? 

Parker: I would ask John Gardner if I have what it takes to write a good novel. 

Granados: Maybe I’d ask Truman Capote if he really did have an Answered Prayers manuscript [a complete version of Capote’s unfinished final novel which some say exists]. I think any person I would ask would just be because I’m nosy, I don’t think it would have anything to do with art or writing. I want to gossip. 

O’Neill: Mavis Gallant. I would like to write a little biography, following her through Paris. And I would like to ask her questions about childhood.

You are on a date with a person and find a book on their nightstand that makes you immediately leave. What was the book? 

Parker: My own, maybe? 

Granados: I’m not super snobby, but there are definitely some titles that would not leave a good taste in my mouth. I feel like everyone might say Ayn Rand? 

Belcourt: Something white supremacist. 

O’Neill: Jordan Peterson. It would make me question why on earth they had invited me, of all people, on a date. I’m also suspicious of Norton Anthologies in a small book collection. It tells me they haven’t purchased any books since they had to in school.

What is the one rule that a writer must never break? 

Parker: Never share a good idea before it’s a draft. 

Granados: Don’t try to sound cool. (I’m not joking! It’s embarrassing for the both of us.)

Belcourt: Believe in yourself. 

O’Neill: Never let anyone tell you that you are being selfish and don’t deserve time to write. It is a holy use of one’s time.

What is the one rule that a writer must consistently break? 

Parker: Whatever your know-it-all ex-boyfriend told you to do.

Granados: Self-censorship and being too precious. I think of Sarah Polley’s title of her essay collection Run Towards the Danger. I think that’s key for life and writing. 

Belcourt: Write what you know. 

O’Neill: The desire to be consumed by melancholy. ­Writers need to experience happiness too.

On that note, let’s move on to some less serious questions. What’s your go-to fall meal recipe? 

Parker: Mushroom risotto and a salad, maybe arugula with nuts and dried fruit and a simple vinaigrette. Last fall my partner and I were making these sandwiches on ciabatta rolls with extra old cheddar, walnuts, sliced pear and strawberry jam, sometimes grated parm and black pepper. So those with the same salad. 

Granados: Roasted root vegetables with sour cream. 

Belcourt: I don’t make it often, but I love a hearty chicken pot pie in the fall/winter.

O’Neill: I never cook. I love eating noodles in tiny restaurants, looking out the window at a busy fall street. 

What is a fall fashion trend you’d like to see abolished? 

Parker: I’m not sure I know what the fall trends are or will be. I spend six or so days a week in a TNA sweatsuit. I’ve heard talk of low-rise jeans and cropped jackets, and that’s not going to work for my body image.

Granados: I don’t even know, but I’m glad in the fall the men stop running around the streets shirtless in the name of exercise. It’s very distracting.

O’Neill: I don’t like fast fashion and I think we have enough clothes on Earth. I grew up wearing clothes from the donation bin in the Women’s Centre. And you can create the most interesting, fancy fits from thrown-away items. So originality, and no trends.

What’s your favourite place in your city to watch the ­sunset? 

Parker: The walking bridge or Odell Park [in Fredericton].

Granados: [Toronto’s] Riverdale Park. 

Belcourt: The aptly named Sunset Beach [in Vancouver].

O’Neill: I have literally never gone out of my way to watch a sunset. I just see them by accident walking home. From my perspective, the sun sets [in ­Montreal] somewhere on Avenue Van Horne. The sunsets are best in Mile End, because they signify coming home for me. 

What’s a lesser-known business in your city that deserves more respect? 

Parker: I will list my top five slices of carrot cake in Fredericton: Wolastoq Wharf, the Hilltop, the Abbey, the Happy Baker, the Snooty Fox.

Granados: Tre Mari Bakery [in Toronto], if only for their pistachio ice cream. It’s big in the area but I actually think it’s a destination that people should come from other neighbourhoods to visit, for their desserts and things. I got my birthday cake there and it was a St. Honore pyramid, which is something like a croquembouche. Very chic! 

Belcourt: Not exactly lesser known, but Iron Dog Books on Vancouver’s Hastings Street is great. 

O’Neill: That newish depanneur on Parc and Mont-­Royal [in Montreal] is an old-school replacement for the chains that tried to set up there. 

If you were in charge of Noah’s Ark, which animal would you leave behind, and why? 

Parker: I want to say bed bugs, but who am I to decide their fate?

Granados: I was going to say I would never leave an animal behind, but then I realized mosquitoes, ­definitely mosquitoes.

Belcourt: Alas, spiders. 

O’Neill: Rats. Because they pick on the poor. And I’ve lived with them before, against my will. And when they die in the walls, the smell makes you feel improper and sordid. Which is perhaps a truth of the human condition. So I guess that’s why they were invited along.

What is the silliest piece of media that you would ride or die for? 

Parker: I like that British baking show, and Sex and the City is, as my therapist once put it, “life-changing.” 

Granados: Love Island. 

Belcourt: HBO’s Girls. 

O’Neill: Any interview with Dakota Johnson. 

If you became mayor and had strangely (and undemocratically) omniscient powers over your city and its inhabitants, what would your first official act be? 

Granados: Abolish cars! Stabilize rent! Free childcare!

Belcourt: Land back. 

O’Neill: I would turn all mansions into apartment ­buildings. ⁂

These interviews have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity. 

Nour Abi-Nakhoul is the editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve. Her debut novel, Supplication, came out in May.